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PRINCETON,  N.  J. 


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Division 


Section . ' 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


Uniform  with  this  Volume 


CHILDREN  OF  INDIA 

By  Janet  Harvey  Kelman 

CHILDREN  OF  CHINA 
By  C.  Campbell  Brown 

CHILDREN  OF  AFRICA 
By  James  B.  Baird 

CHILDREN  OF  ARABIA 
By  John  Cameron  Young 

CHILDREN  OF  JAMAICA 
By  Isabel  C.  Maclean 

CHILDREN  OF  JAPAN 

By  Janet  Harvey  Kelman 

CHILDREN  OF  EGYPT 
By  L.  Crowther 

CHILDREN  OF  CEYLON 
By  Thomas  Moscrop 


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PERSIAN  SHEPHERD  BOV 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


BY 


MRS  NAPIER  MALCOLM 


v 


\v 


JAM  19  1915 


:J  f  A  *  ’  r>  i 

•  •  i  •  r 


M 

UjH  L 


WITH  EIGHT  COLOURED  ILLUSTRATIONS 


FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  CHICAGO  TORONTO 


My  Dear  Boys  and  Girls, 

This  is  a  book  about  Persia,  intended 
to  be  read  by  children ;  and,  on  this  account,  much 
has  had  to  be  left  out.  Do  not  think,  when  you  have 
read  this  book,  that  you  know  how  bad  Muhammadan¬ 
ism  is,  for  a  great  deal  of  its  sin  and  cruelty  is  too 
terrible  to  tell  to  young  folks.  But  I  hope  enough 
has  been  said  to  show  you  that  Persian  children  do 
need  to  be  rescued  from  Muhammadanism  and  brought 
to  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  to  be  His  children.  He 
needs  them  and  they  need  Him.  So  for  His  sake  and 
theirs  we  must  do  all  we  can  to  win  the  Persians  for 
Christ. 

I  am, 

Your  sincere  friend, 

U.  MALCOLM. 


Broughton,  Manchester,  1911. 


TURNBULL  AND  SPEARS,  PRINTERS,  EDINBURGH 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

I.  Muhammad  ......  7 

II.  Persia  .  .  .  .  .  .  .11 

III.  Persian  Babies  .  .  .  .  .18 

IV.  Persian  Clothes  .  .  .  .  .24 

V.  Persian  Games  and  Toys.  .  .  -31 

VI.  Persian  Sweets  .....  36 

VII.  Persian  Prayers  .  .  .  .  .41 

VIII.  Fasting  and  Pilgrimages  .  .  .4 7 

IX.  Savabs  ......  52 

X.  Muhammadan  Charms  and  Superstitions  .  58 

XI.  Persian  Schools  .....  62 

XII.  Christian  Schools  .....  69 

XIII.  Work  ......  74 

XIV.  Child  Wives  .....  79 

XV.  Sick  Children  .....  84 

XVI.  Conclusion  ......  92 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Persian  Shepherd  Boy  . 

• 

PAGE 

.  Frontispiece 

A  Street  of  Shops 

• 

15 

A  Baby  in  Hammock 

• 

20 

Ladies’  Out-door  and  In-door  Costumes 

25 

Persians  at  Prayer 

• 

43 

Reading  the  Quran  to  the  Sick 

• 

.  58 

A  Persian  School  . 

• 

64 

A  Mission  Hospital 


90 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


CHAPTER  I 

MUHAMMAD 

Before  we  look  at  the  Persian  children  of  to-day, 
let  us  go  back  nearly  thirteen  and  a  half  centuries  to 
the  year  of  our  Lord  570,  and  take  a  look  at  two 
adjoining  countries  in  Europe  and  two  adjoining 
countries  in  Asia. 

In  Western  Scotland,  St  Columb  is  teaching  the 
people  Christianity,  and  is  writing  out  copy  after  copy 
of  the  Bible,  until  tradition  tells  that  he  copied  it  out 
three  hundred  times. 

In  England  the  heathen  Saxons  are  conquering  the 
Midlands  and  crushing  out  the  Christianity  of  the 
Britons. 

In  Persia  there  is  a  Christian  Church,  but  most  of 
the  people  are  Zoroastrians,  that  is,  they  belong 
to  the  Parsee  religion.  They  worship  God  and  believe 
in  a  prophet  called  Zoroaster,  who  lived  long  before 
the  birth  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  so  knew 
nothing  about  Him.  He  seems  to  have  taught  his 
people  much  that  was  very  good,  but  their  religion  has 
become  full  of  superstitions. 

Lastly,  we  must  go  to  Arabia,  where  a  Muhammadan 
legend  describes  a  curious  scene. 


7 


8 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


A  number  of  Arab  women  are  riding  into  the  town 
of  Mecca.  Their  animals  are  weary  and  very  thin  and 
weak,  for  it  is  a  year  of  famine.  Last  of  all  comes  a 
woman  with  a  crying  baby,  riding  on  the  thinnest  and 
most  miserable  looking  donkey  of  all  the  company. 
They  are  nurses  from  the  healthiest  part  of  Arabia, 
come  to  find  children  to  take  home  and  nurse,  each 
hoping  to  get  the  child  of  a  wealthy  man,  who  will 
pay  her  well,  and  give  her  handsome  presents. 

They  are  not  long  kept  waiting.  The  babies  are 
brought  out,  and  questioning  and  bargaining  begin. 
One  baby  is  not  popular — the  whisper  goes  round  that 
it  is  an  orphan — there  is  no  father  to  give  presents — 
the  grandfather  who  is  looking  for  a  nurse  will  surely 
not  do  much  for  it.  And  so  one  after  another  all  the 
women  refuse  the  baby,  and  the  old  man  begins  to 
despair  of  success.  All  the  women  have  found 
nurslings  except  one,  the  woman  who  rode  in  last. 
She,  too,  has  refused  the  orphan,  but  now,  seeing  no 
hope  of  a  better  bargain,  rather  than  have  taken  her 
journey  for  nothing,  she  tells  the  old  man  she  has 
changed  her  mind,  and  carries  the  baby  home.  And 
the  story  runs  that  the  thin  weak  donkey  that  could 
hardly  drag  itself  along  as  it  entered  Mecca,  ran  along 
so  nimbly  on  the  way  home  that  the  rest  could 
scarcely  keep  up  with  it. 

The  orphan  baby  was  Muhammad,  the  founder 
of  the  religion  called  after  him  Muhammadanism. 
Some  of  the  details  of  this  story  (told  by  a  Muham¬ 
madan  writer)  are  probably  quite  untrue.  Little 
Muhammad’s  grandfather  was  known  to  be  very  rich 


MUHAMMAD 


9 


and  in  a  very  high  position,  and  if  the  baby  was  re¬ 
fused  it  was  probably  because  he  was  a  sickly  child, 
and  would  be  difficult  to  rear.  However,  in  due  course 
he  grew  bigger,  and  came  home  to  his  mother,  and  after 
her  death  lived  with  his  old  grandfather,  who  thought 
all  the  world  of  him. 

Mecca  was  an  interesting  town  to  live  in,  for  once 
a  year  pilgrims  from  all  parts  of  Arabia  came  to  the 
great  idol  temple,  and  little  Muhammad  would  see  all 
there  was  to  be  seen,  for  his  grandfather  kept  the  keys 
and  superintended  everything. 

When  his  grandfather  died  he  went  to  live  with  his 
uncle,  who  used  to  take  him  on  business  journeys,  going 
through  the  wide  deserts  to  distant  towns  with  long 
strings  of  camels  loaded  with  goods  to  sell.  So  the 
boy  grew  up  a  good  man  of  business  and  saw  much  of 
foreign  countries  and  something  of  foreign  religions, 
Christianity,  Judaism,  and  Parsiism,  and  he  grew  dis¬ 
contented  with  his  own  country  and  his  own  religion. 

All  the  great  peoples  round  worshipped  one  God. 
Surely  Arabia  would  be  a  better  and  greater  country  if 
it  did  the  same.  All  the  great  religions  had  a  prophet 
and  a  book.  The  Christians  had  Jesus  Christ  and  the 
Gospel,  the  Jews  had  Moses  and  the  Law,  even  the 
Parsees  had  Zoroaster  and  his  book  the  Zend  Avesta. 
Surely  what  the  Arabs  needed  was  a  prophet  and  a  book. 

Muhammad  was  not  the  only  person  who  thought 
this.  There  was  a  group  of  people,  several  of  whom 
were  relations  of  him  or  of  his  wife,  who  shared  this 
view.  Some  of  them  thought  that  Moses  and  the  Law 
would  be  best  for  Arabia ;  but  many  of  them  saw  that 


10 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


Jesus  Christ  and  the  Gospel  were  what  they  needed, 
and  most  of  these  in  the  end  became  Christians.  If 
Muhammad  had  joined  them,  the  history  of  the  world 
from  then  to  now  might  have  been  very  different. 
But  Muhammad  had  set  his  heart  on  an  Arabian 
prophet  and  an  Arabian  book,  and  the  more  he 
thought  of  it  the  more  sure  he  felt  that  this  was  the 
real  way  to  unity  and  greatness  for  Arabia. 

He  himself  belonged  to  the  family  which  took  the 
lead  in  religious  matters  in  Arabia,  he  had  always 
been  made  much  of,  and  told  he  would  be  a  great  man ; 
he  used  to  have  fits  which  seemed  to  him  and  to 
others  to  mark  him  out  as  something  out  of  the 
common  ;  so  it  is  not  surprising  that  he  at  last  came 
to  believe  that  he  was  to  be  the  new  Arabian  prophet 
who  seemed  to  him  to  be  so  badly  wanted.  His  fits  began 
to  take  the  form  of  visions,  and  he  believed  that  the 
words  of  the  longed  for  book  were  being  revealed  to  him. 

But  it  was  a  long  time  before  he  came  forward 
publicly,  and  when  he  did  he  was  a  good  deal  laughed 
at,  and  only  a  few  became  his  followers.  Then  he  got 
an  invitation  to  the  town  of  Medina,  where  he  had  a 
number  of  cousins.  The  people  of  Medina  were  very 
jealous  of  Mecca,  and  all,  whether  they  believed  in  him 
or  not,  joined  in  giving  Muhammad  a  great  welcome. 

It  was  in  Medina  that  Muhammad  really  founded 
his  religion,  and  there  he  became  a  very  great 
man.  But  sad  to  say,  as  his  religion  developed  all  its 
bad  points  came  out,  and  Muhammad  became  a  very 
cruel  tyrant  and  very  self-indulgent,  excusing  himself 
by  saying  that  God  allowed  him,  because  he  was  a 


PERSIA  11 

prophet,  to  do  things  which  were  sinful  when  other 
people  did  them. 

The  people  who  joined  Muhammad’s  religion  were 
called  Muhammadans  or  Muslims,  and  they  went  every¬ 
where  making  as  many  converts  as  they  could,  by  fair 
means  or  foul.  They  had  learnt  that  there  was  one 
God,  but  they  knew  nothing  of  the  Bible ;  they  only 
knew  the  Quran,  the  book  which  Muhammad  was 
revealing,  and  they  knew  nothing  of  the  example  of 
Jesus  Christ:  their  only  example  was  Muhammad, 
who  was  a  murderer. 

You  may  wonder  what  all  this  has  to  do  with 
Persian  children.  One  of  the  first  countries  conquered 
by  the  Muhammadans  was  Persia — and  the  Persian 
children  to-day  are  themselves  Muhammadans. 


CHAPTER  II 

PERSIA 

There  is  a  story  that  when  the  Muhammadans  took 
Persia  and  killed  the  Parsee  king  Yazdigird,  their 
Khalif  ‘Omar  asked  Yazdigird’s  son  where  he  would 
like  to  live.  He  said  he  would  like  to  settle  in  Persia 
out  of  reach  of  any  cultivated  spot.  ‘Omar  accordingly 
sent  him  off  with  an  escort  of  soldiers  to  find  a  suitable 
place.  After  three  years  he  returned  and  said  he 
could  not  find  any  place  such  as  he  had  asked  for. 
‘Omar  saw  that  he  was  doing  all  this  with  some  pur¬ 
pose,  and  asked  him  what  it  was.  Yazdigird’s  son 
answered  that  he  wanted  to  show  ‘Omar  how  prosperous 


12 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


and  well  cultivated  the  land  had  become  in  the  hands 
of  the  Parsees,  and  begged  him  to  see  to  it  that  it 
remained  so  under  the  Muhammadans. 

But  it  did  not,  and  to-day  a  great  deal  of  Persia 
has  relapsed  into  desert. 

In  our  country  all  is  green,  and  stones  have  to  be 
put  up  to  show  where  one  village  ends  and  the  next 
begins.  In  most  parts  of  Persia  you  may  look  over 
the  plain  and  see  the  villages  quite  distinct — each  a 
little  green  blot  on  a  vast  sheet  of  sand  or  dry  earth. 

The  very  fruitfulness  of  the  ground  makes  it  less 
green  than  it  would  otherwise  have  to  be  to  support  the 
population,  for  when  three  crops  can  be  got  off  the 
same  piece  of  land  in  one  year,  only  a  third  of  the 
amount  of  land  that  you  would  expect  to  be  needed  to 
support  the  village  is  under  cultivation. 

The  villages  vary  very  much.  Some  count  their 
population  by  hundreds,  while  one  village,  marked  on 
the  map,  contains  just  two  families,  seven  persons  in 
all,  including  two  children.  Their  nearest  neighbours 
live  six  miles  off,  over  the  sand. 

How  bare  the  world  must  appear  to  those  two 
little  children.  Children  here  who  live  in  the 
country  can  hardly  imagine  any  boundary  to  the 
wonderful  green  tangle  that  they  can  see  on  every 
side  of  them.  And  children  who  live  in  towns  look 
out  every  day  upon  wonderful  human  works,  which, 
although  they  are  not  as  marvellous  as  God’s  country, 
yet  puzzle  them  very  much  as  to  how  they  were  ever 
made.  With  a  Persian  child  it  is  quite  different.  In 
many  places  the  children  do  not  know  what  wild  growth 


PERSIA 


13 


is,  and  if  you  talk  of  continuous  country,  hundred  miles 
after  hundred  miles  of  field  and  wood  and  meadow, 
they  think  you  are  telling  an  impossible  fairy  tale. 
While  as  for  the  little  town  children,  the  buildings 
which  they  see  all  round  them  made  of  sun-dried  bricks 
and  earth,  the  barrels  and  the  thousand  and  one 
household  utensils  formed  of  exactly  the  same  material, 
or  perhaps  of  clay  very  roughly  baked  in  a  primitive 
kiln,  seem  to  them  hardly  more  artificial  and  man-made 
than  the  corn  in  the  walled  gardens  outside  the  city, 
which  they  see  watered  twice  a  week. 

They  have  a  very  different  life  from  you  and  me. 

Little  Ahmad  was  a  sturdy,  jolly  little  lad  of  four 
when  I  knew  him,  and,  though  he  ought  to  have  known 
better,  he  used  to  call  after  me  (if  his  parents  were  out 
of  hearing)  the  rhyme  so  familiar  to  Europeans  in 
Persia — 

Ferangi, 

Chi  rang-i, 

Palang-i, 

which,  translated  into  English,  means — 

European, 

What  colour  art  thou  ? 

Thou  art  a  leopard. 

He  lived  in  a  really  beautiful  house,  built  of  sun-dried 
bricks  and  clay,  and  whitened  inside  with  a  smooth 
coat  of  plaster  of  Paris. 

The  rooms  were  large  and  very  nicely  furnished  with 
beautiful  Persian  carpets,  and  a  mattress  and  pillows 
of  gay  designs,  and  Ahmad,  little  rascal  though  he  was, 
would  never  have  dreamed  of  treading  on  those  carpets 


14 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


with  his  shoes  on  ;  all  shoes  were  left  at  the  door. 
One  small  table  for  the  tea-urn  completed  the  furniture. 
And  upstairs  ?  Upstairs  was  the  roof,  such  a  lovely 
large  flat  roof,  Ahmad  loved  it,  and  he  often  terrified 
his  mother  by  the  way  he  leaned  over  the  low  wall  to 
look  down  at  the  street,  for  the  house  had  no  window 
looking  to  the  road.  All  the  windows  looked  into  the 
garden,  which  might  be  said  to  be  in  the  middle  of  the 
house,  for  the  rooms  were  built  round  it.  The  windows, 
too,  were  all  doors  ;  some  of  the  rooms  had  as  many  as 
five  double  doors  all  in  a  row,  and  when  they  were  all 
open  the  room  was  very  airy  and  bright. 

There  was  no  grass,  and  no  gravel  path  for  Ahmad  to 
play  on,  but  there  was  a  nice  wide  brick-paved  walk  all 
round  the  garden,  which  gave  him  plenty  of  room.  In 
the  centre  were  the  beds,  which  were  watered  by  turning 
a  stream  in  and  flooding  them  once  a  week.  There  were 
watering  cans,  but  they  were  only  used  for  watering  the 
path  and  roof,  and  even  the  rooms,  to  keep  them  cool,  not 
for  the  flower  beds.  There  was  a  large  tank,  too,  in  the 
garden  with  gold  fish  in  it,  where  Ahmad  loved  to  cool 
his  feet  on  a  hot  day,  and  the  days  can  be  hot  in  Persia. 

When  it  was  dinner-time  in  Ahmad’s  home  a  cloth 
was  spread  on  the  floor,  and  he  sat  on  his  heels  beside 
it,  and  had  a  loaf  of  bread  for  a  plate.  It  was  flat  and 
round,  and  about  as  thick  as  a  plate,  so  it  did  very  well. 
But  he  had  no  spoon  or  fork. 

One  of  the  things  he  liked  best  was  rice,  and  when 
his  mother  put  a  few  handfuls  on  his  bread  he  would 
eat  it  quickly  and  tidily  with  one  hand,  without  spilling 
any,  which  is  not  as  easy  as  it  sounds. 


A  STREET  UK  SHOPS 


PERSIA 


15 


Sometimes  Ahmad  went  out  for  a  walk  in  the  town 
with  his  father,  or  with  his  mother  and  a  servant,  and 
he  passed  along  streets  that  had  not  any  names,  and 
by  houses  that  had  not  any  names  or  numbers.  There 
was  no  pavement  except  sometimes  a  narrow  strip  in  the 
middle  of  the  road  for  the  mules  and  donkeys.  There 
were  no  gardens  in  front  of  the  houses,  there  were  no 
windows  facing  the  road,  all  he  saw  was  a  sandy  road 
with  a  high  mud  wall  on  each  side,  and  a  heavy  wooden 
door  here  and  there,  the  front  door  of  a  house. 

Sometimes  they  came  to  a  "  bazar  ”  or  street  of 
shops.  Here  the  street  was  covered  over  with  a 
mud  roof  so  that  goods  and  sellers  and  purchasers 
might  keep  cool  in  hot  weather  and  dry  in  wet  weather. 
He  did  not  need  to  go  into  the  shops,  for  the  counters 
were  all  along  the  street  and  there  were  no  windows. 

When  the  summer  was  getting  very  hot,  it  was 
decided  that  Ahmad  and  all  his  family  should  go  for  a 
summer  holiday  to  a  village  in  the  hills. 

What  a  packing  up  there  was  !  They  packed  the 
carpets,  they  packed  the  beds,  they  packed  the  kettles 
and  saucepans.  Then  a  number  of  mules  were  brought 
to  the  door  and  such  a  shouting  and  bustle  began  as 
the  loads  were  roped  together,  two  and  two,  and  slung 
across  the  big  padded  pack-saddles.  One  mule  carried 
two  great  covered  panniers  and  these  were  filled  with 
cushions,  and  Ahmad's  great-grandmother  got  into 
one,  and  his  mother  got  into  the  other  to  balance  her, 
and  they  pulled  the  curtains  well  over  the  front,  so 
that  no  one  might  see  them.  Ahmad  himself  sat  in 
front  of  a  servant  who  held  him  safe,  and  some  of  the 


16 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


bedding  made  a  nice  broad  soft  seat  for  them  on  the 
mule’s  back.  At  last  all  the  mules  were  ready  with 
their  loads  and  off  they  set  through  the  streets,  and 
soon  they  found  themselves  outside  the  town,  going 
mile  after  mile  across  the  bare  desert  plain.  This 
went  on  for  fifteen  miles  and  then  they  reached  a  large 
village  at  the  foot  of  the  hills.  They  had  been  riding 
five  hours  and  were  tired  and  hungry,  so  they  dis¬ 
mounted  at  the  caravansarai  or  inn.  One  of  the 
servants  took  a  carpet  off  one  of  the  loads  and  got  a 
cloth  and  some  food  wrapped  up  in  a  large  handker¬ 
chief  out  of  the  saddlebags  and  spread  a  meal  on  the 
ground,  while  another  got  the  tea-urn  and  charcoal, 
boiled  the  water  and  made  the  tea.  After  a  few  hours' 
rest  on  the  roof,  the  shouting  and  loading  began  again 
and  off  they  went,  up  the  hill,  which  was  terribly  steep 
in  some  places.  Now  they  saw  scattered  and  stunted 
plants  growing  here  and  there,  and  finally,  after 
another  seven  hours,  they  reached  their  summer 
holiday  quarters  in  a  little  hill  village. 

How  Ahmad  enjoyed  the  hills  and  fields  and  trees, 
the  flowers  and  birds  and  butterflies.  A  little  brook 
ran  down  the  valley  and  on  either  side  were  cornfields 
and  orchards  and  gardens,  as  many  as  the  brook  could 
provide  water  for.  And  at  night  Ahmad  would  hear 
the  shouting,  as  ‘Ali  Muhammad  declared  that  Husain 
had  had  his  fair  share  of  water  and  now  it  was  his  turn 
to  have  it  for  his  orchard.  For  water  is  very  precious 
in  Persia,  and  must  be  made  the  greatest  possible  use 
of,  day  and  night  alike. 

But  the  little  children  who  live  in  the  village  are 


PERSIA 


17 


not  so  fortunate  as  little  Ahmad.  They  work  all  the 
summer  at  gardening,  shepherding,  and  other  work ; 
but  in  winter  they  have  to  stay  in,  and  they  live  up¬ 
stairs  and  their  sheep  and  goats  downstairs.  But 
the  stairs  are  outside  and  sometimes  it  is  too  cold  for 
them  even  to  go  down  to  feed  the  animals.  If  they 
can  they  make  a  little  fire  of  sticks  in  the  oven,  which 
is  only  a  deep,  round  hole  in  the  floor,  and  when  the 
flame  has  died  down  they  sit  round  with  their  legs 
hanging  into  the  oven  and  cover  over  the  opening  to 
keep  it  warm  as  long  as  possible.  One  very  severe 
winter  there  was  a  report  current  in  the  town  that  in 
this  village  the  water  was  all  frozen  and  that  the  animals 
were  dying  because  there  was  not  enough  fuel  to  melt 
the  ice  and  give  them  water.  The  poor  children  must 
have  had  a  very  hard  time  that  winter. 

Even  in  the  town  Ahmad  is  one  of  the  fortunate 
children.  Little  Soghra  had  a  very  different  home.  She 
lived  with  her  grandmother  in  a  single  small  room. 
The  floor  was  mud,  covered  in  one  place  by  a 
small  ragged  piece  of  coarse  matting.  On  this  the 
grandmother  lay,  for  she  was  old  and  ill.  The  bed¬ 
clothes  were  filthy  and  torn.  One  side  of  the  room 
was  filled  with  a  pile  of  pomegranate  skins,  which  are 
used  for  making  dye,  and  there  were  several  fowls 
wandering  about.  There  was  no  furniture,  nothing 
but  a  few  old  pots  and  cups  and  a  waterbottle.  And 
yet  Soghra  was  a  cheery  little  girl,  and  she  and  her 
grandmother  were  very  fond  of  each  other. 


B 


18 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


CHAPTER  III 

PERSIAN  BABIES 

A  Persian  baby — what  a  funny  little  mortal !  It 
looks  for  all  the  world  like  a  little  mummy,  rolled  up  in 
handkerchiefs  and  shawls  till  only  its  little  face  peeps 
out,  and  tied  up  with  a  long  strip  of  braid  exactly  like 
a  parcel  tied  up  with  string.  Hasn’t  it  got  any  arms 
and  legs  ?  Oh,  yes,  safely  put  away  inside  all  those 
wrappings  and  put  away  carefully  too — straightened 
out  and  rolled  up  so  thoroughly  that  it  will  stand  up 
stiff  and  straight  against  the  wall  though  it  is  only  a 
week  old. 

How  surprised  and  shocked  the  Persian  mothers  are 
to  see  the  English  babies  kicking  and  throwing  their 
arms  about.  “  O  Khanum,  aren’t  you.  afraid  its  limbs 
will  grow  crooked  ?  Why  don’t  you  bind  them 
straight  ?  Aren’t  you  afraid  its  legs  will  get  broken 
if  you  leave  them  loose  like  that  ?  ” 

So  at  its  very  start  on  life’s  journey  the  poor  little 
Persian  baby  is  checked  and  prevented  from  growing 
up  properly  ;  for  how  can  its  little  legs  grow  strong 
without  kicking  ?  It  is  no  wonder  that  Persian  babies 
as  a  rule  learn  to  walk  much  later  than  English  babies. 

But  perhaps  the  Persians  are  not  quite  so  foolish 
as  they  seem  when  they  roll  their  babies  up  in  these 
stiff  little  bundles.  Very  likely  the  little  anns  and 
legs  would  be  broken  or  bent  if  they  were  left  loose, 
for  many  of  the  Persian  mothers  are  very  young — 
much  too  young  to  know  how  to  look  after  babies. 


PERSIAN  BABIES 


19 


They  often  treat  them  like  dolls  and  would  very 
likely  break  them  just  as  English  girls  break  their 
dolls. 

Even  the  grown-up  mothers  are  often  very  careless. 
One  woman  I  knew  laid  her  baby,  not  quite  a  year  old, 
on  a  chair,  and  left  it  there.  Of  course  it  fell  off — it 
was  sure  to ;  and  yet  she  did  this  over  and  over  again, 
and  a  few  days  later  dropped  it  into  a  stream  of  water. 
She  was  very  much  surprised  that  it  began  to  have  fits 
at  this  time,  and  she  said  she  could  think  of  nothing 
to  account  for  them. 

A  new  missionary,  who  did  not  know  the  ways  of 
Persians,  went  one  day  to  see  another  woman  and  found 
her  in  bed,  that  is,  lying  on  a  mattress  on  the  floor 
under  a  large  quilt.  Her  friends  invited  the  missionary 
to  sit  on  the  quilt  beside  her,  for  they  do  not  use 
chairs  in  most  Persian  houses.  After  she  had  sat  for 
some  time  she  enquired  for  the  baby.  They  pointed 
to  a  little  lump  in  the  quilt,  and  there,  close  beside 
her,  entirely  covered  up  and  invisible,  was  the  baby, 
and  it  gave  the  poor  missionary  a  terrible  shock 
to  see  how  near  she  had  been  to  sitting  down  upon 
it.  After  that,  she  always  asked  to  see  the  baby  before 
she  sat  down. 

A  baby  less  than  a  week  old  was  brought  one  day 
to  the  Julfa  hospital  with  its  face  badly  torn  by  a  cat. 
A  few  days  later  the  doctor  went  into  the  ward  and 
found  the  mother  smoking  and  gossiping  with  the  other 
women,  but  the  baby  was  nowhere  to  be  seen.  “  Where 
is  the  baby  ?  ”  “  It  is  all  right,”  said  the  mother; 
"  I  put  it  under  the  bed.”  And  sure  enough,  a  little 


20 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


way  off,  under  a  bed  (this  time  an  English  bed)  lay  the 
poor  little  bundle,  its  arms  bound  to  its  sides,  only 
its  little  face  exposed,  or  rather  half-exposed,  for  the 
torn  half  was  covered  with  a  dressing,  while  close  at 
hand  there  prowled  in  search  of  food  a  large  half-wild 
cat,  which  frequented  the  hospital  and  had  slipped  in 
at  an  open  door.* 

When  they  get  a  little  older  the  babies  are  laid  in 
broad  comfortable  leather  hammocks  slung  between 
rings  let  into  the  walls  of  the  room.  Most  Persian 
rooms  have  these  rings  in  the  walls.  These  hammocks 
save  the  Persian  mothers  a  great  deal  of  trouble,  for  a 
single  push  will  set  the  hammock  swinging  for  a  long 
time  and  keep  the  baby  quiet  or  send  it  to  sleep. 

No  baby  may  be  left  alone  in  a  room  till  it  is  forty 
days  old. 

From  the  very  first  the  baby  is  given  kaif  every¬ 
day,  that  is,  something  to  make  it  sleep  ;  this  kaif 
is  almost  invariably  opium.  After  the  first  week 
most  babies  are  also  given  tea  every  day,  without  milk 
but  with  a  great  deal  of  sugar  in  it,  or  better  still 
sugar-candy.  This  is  considered  specially  good  for 
babies,  but  it  takes  a  long  time  to  dissolve.  Both 
opium  and  tea  are  very  bad  for  the  baby’s  digestion, 
so  we  are  not  surprised  to  find  that  nearly  all  Persians 
suffer  from  indigestion. 

There  is  one  Persian  custom  connected  with  babies 
that  boys  and  girls  of  other  lands  would  probably  like 


*  For  the  credit  of  the  hospital  authorities  it  must  be  stated 
that  they  were  making  every  effort  to  destroy  the  cat,  but  had 
hitherto  failed  owing  to  its  wildness  and  cunning. 


A  BABY  IN  HAMMOCK. 


PERSIAN  BABIES 


to  introduce  into  their  own  country.  The  newly- 
arrived  baby  is  weighed  and  its  weight  in  sweets  is 
handed,  round  to  the  people  in  the  house,  and  it  is 
supposed  to  bring  bad  luck  to  the  baby  if  anyone 
refuses  its  sweets.  Plenty  of  people  always  drop  in 
when  they  hear  that  a  new  baby  has  arrived. 

Another  Persian  rule  for  babies  would  not  please 
your  mothers  at  all.  After  the  first  bath  no  baby 
must  be  washed  all  over  till  it  is  a  year  old.  One 
Persian  lady,  who  was  better  educated  than  most, 
and  had  been  reading  about  European  ideas  on  health 
and  cleanliness,  told  the  missionaries  that  she  was 
bringing  up  her  little  boy  just  like  a  European  baby. 
She  said  she  gave  him  a  bath  every  day  and  generally 
let  him  kick  instead  of  tying  his  legs  up  to  make  them 
straight.  She  was  delighted  and  trumphant  when, 
instead  of  getting  crooked,  his  legs  grew  so  strong  that 
he  walked  at  about  half  the  usual  age.  But  when  he 
was  nearly  a  year  old  his  body  became  covered  with 
sores  and  the  missionary  doctor  told  the  mother  to 
wash  them  not  with  ordinary  water  in  the  bath,  but 
with  a  lotion.  "  I  should  never  think  of  washing  them 
in  the  bath/'  she  said.  “  His  body  must  not  be  washed 
till  he  is  a  year  old.“  But  I  thought/’  said  the  doctor, 
<f  that  you  gave  him  a  bath  every  day.”  “  Oh  dear 
no,”  she  replied  ;  “  I  don’t  wash  his  body.  It  is  his  legs 
that  I  wash  every  day.” 

When  a  Persian  baby  learns  to  talk  it  begins  just 
like  any  other  baby,  so  that  the  Persians  declared 
with  great  glee  that  the  English  babies  were  talking 
Persian  when  they  said  “  Baba  ”  and  “  Dada.”  But 


22 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


instead  of  “  Daddy  ”  and  “  Mummy  ”  Persian  babies 
call  their  father  and  mother  Baba  and  Nana. 

When  the  baby  is  shown  to  anyone  the  mother 
generally  remarks  that  it  is  an  ugly  little  thing,  and 
similarly  the  visitors  are  expected  to  say  how  ugly  and 
dark  it  is,  though  there  is  no  need  to  say  it  with  any 
great  conviction.  It  is  possible  to  say  “  How  ugly  you 
are  ”  just  as  affectionately  as  “You  little  darling/’ 
But  such  uncomplimentary  remarks  are  used  to  avert 
bad  luck  and  to  guard  against  any  suspicion  of  the  evil 
eye.  If  the  visitor  makes  any  complimentary  remark 
she  must  add  “ Masha  alldh  ”  ( i.e .  “  May  God  avert  it  ”), 
or  the  parents  will  be  seriously  alarmed,  and  Baby’s 
admirer  may  be  held  responsible  for  any  calamity 
which  befalls  him  for  weeks  afterwards. 

Bibi  Fati  was  the  mother  of  four  dear  little  children, 
Rubabeh,  Hasan,  Riza,  and  Sakineh,  and  very  dearly 
she  loved  them.  One  day  they  were  all  gathered  to¬ 
gether  for  dinner  when  in  walked  a  poor  old  beggar 
woman  in  search  of  a  meal.  She  was  very  anxious 
to  please  the  mother,  and  looking  round  at  the 
children  said :  “  What  a  nice  little  family  you  have ; 
you  are  like  a  hen  surrounded  by  her  chickens.” 

Poor  Bibi  Fati  did  not  feel  at  all  comfortable  at  such 
a  complimentary  speech  and  quickly  gave  the  old 
woman  some  food  and  sent  her  about  her  business. 

For  a  day  or  two  all  went  well.  Then  one  after 
another  Rubabeh,  Hasan,  Riza,  and  even  little 
Sakineh  sickened  and  died,  probably  of  some  infectious 
disease,  and  the  poor  mother  was  left  childless  and 
heartbroken.  Nothing  would  convince  her  and  her 


PERSIAN  BABIES  23 

neighbours  that  the  old  beggar  woman  had  not  caused 
the  catastrophe  by  her  admiration. 

Baby  girls  do  not  get  such  a  good  welcome  as  baby 
boys.  When  little  Feranglz  Khanum  was  born,  her 
father  was  staying  at  a  garden  a  few  miles  away,  and 
no  one  troubled  to  send  him  word.  “  I  would  have 
sent  a  message  if  it  had  been  a  boy,”  said  the  mother, 
“  but  it  is  not  worth  while  for  a  girl.  It  will  do  when 
he  comes  home  next  week.” 

Persian  fathers  and  mothers  are  often  very  fond  of 
their  little  girls,  but  there  is  no  doubt  that  they  very 
much  prefer  boys.  The  father  and  mother,  but 
especially  the  mother,  are  often  known  by  the  name 
of  their  son,  so  much  so  that  sometimes  the  neighbours 
know  them  by  no  other  name  than  “  the  father  of 
Hasan,”  the  “  mother  of  ‘Ali.” 

Perhaps  one  reason  for  preferring  boys  is  that  the 
girls  marry  so  young,  just  as  they  might  begin  to  be 
of  some  use  to  their  mothers  ;  and  the  father  has  to 
pay  a  sum  of  money  to  his  daughter’s  husband  on  her 
marriage.  A  son,  on  the  other  hand,  does  not 
generally  marry  till  he  is  grown  up,  and  then  he  almost 
invariably  brings  his  little  wife  home  and  continues 
to  live  with  his  parents. 

A  greater  reason  is  that  the  Persians  are  Muham¬ 
madans,  as  you  have  already  heard,  and  in  a  Muham¬ 
madan  country  the  men  are  allowed  to  treat  the  girls 
and  women  very  badly,  and  parents  who  care  at  all 
for  their  girls  must  always  feel  great  anxiety  as  to 
their  future. 

We  shall  never  get  the  Persians  to  treat  their  girls 


u 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


and  women  much  better  till  we  teach  them  the  religion 
of  our  loving  Saviour,  Who  cares  for  us  all  equally 
and  wants  us  to  be  equally  kind  to  one  another. 


CHAPTER  IV 

PERSIAN  CLOTHES 

Persian  boys  and  girls  are  white,  almost  as  white  as 
ourselves,  though  they  generally  have  black  hair  and 
dark  eyes.  The  chief  difference  in  appearance  between 
Tommy  Jones  and  ‘Ali  Muhammad  is  that  Tommy 
wears  trousers  while  ‘Ali  Muhammad  appears  to  wear 
a  skirt.  Tommy’s  sister  on  the  other  hand  wears  a 
skirt,  and  ‘Ali  Muhammad’s  sister  wears  trousers. 

The  fact  is  that  if  ‘Ali  Muhammad  is  a  poor  boy,  his 
trousers  are  short  and  so  very  wide  as  to  be  practically 
a  divided  skirt.  Indeed  they  catch  like  a  skirt  in 
running,  so  that  if  he  wants  to  go  fast  he  pulls  one 
trouser-leg  up  out  of  the  way.  If  he  wears  a  coat  at 
all,  it  is  a  long  cotton  one,  or  more  probably  two  long 
cotton  ones,  reaching  nearly  to  his  knees  and  adding 
to  the  skirt-like  appearance. 

The  sons  of  well-to-do  men  often  wear  frock  coats 
with  the  skirts  pleated  all  round  almost  like  a  kilt,  so 
that  in  spite  of  their  longer  and  narrower  trousers  they 
still  have  a  look  of  wearing  skirts. 

‘Ali  Muhammad's  girdle  too,  which  binds  his  coats 
to  him  and  prevents  their  blowing  about  in  the  wind, 
is  more  suggestive  of  a  sash  than  a  belt.  I  once  saw 
a  little  boy  putting  on  his  girdle  on  New  Year’s  Day. 


ladies’  out-door  and  in-door  costumes 


PERSIAN  CLOTHES 


25 


It  was  4  long  folded  scarf  or  shdl  and  he  put  one  end 
round  his  waist  while  his  brother  took  the  other  to  the 
far  end  of  the  long  room  and  drew  it  tight.  Then  my 
little  friend  turned  round  and  round,  so  winding  his 
shdl  round  him,  gradually  moving  up  the  room  as  the 
length  grew  less,  and  he  finished  by  tucking  in  the  end. 
But  whether  they  wear  long  trousers  or  short  ones,  wide 
trousers  or  narrow  ones,  the  boys  all  fasten  them  by 
drawing  them  up  with  a  string  round  the  hips — braces 
are  not  the  fashion. 

As  we  have  found  that,  in  spite  of  appearances,  ‘Ali 
Muhammad  after  all  wears  trousers,  we  may  perhaps 
find  that  his  sister,  Rubabeh,  wears  a  skirt,  and  so  in¬ 
deed  she  does,  but  it  is  so  short  as  not  to  be  very  notice¬ 
able  indoors,  while  out  of  doors  it  is  completely  hidden 
by  the  big  baggjf  over-trousers,  gathered  in  at  the 
ankles  and  footed,  which  she  wears  when  she  goes  in 
the  street.  An  English  missionary  once  suggested  to  a 
young  woman  that  a  skirt  reaching  to  the  knees  would 
look  better,  but  she  said  she  was  not  an  old  woman 
yet.  The  old  women  generally  wear  quiet  colours 
and  long  skirts,  reaching  down  to  the  knee,  but  young 
women  and  girls  like  something  more  dressy.  They 
like  a  nice  bright-patterned  skirt  about  a  foot  long, 
but  wide  enough  to  reach  half  across  the  room.  This 
they  draw  up  with  a  string  over  the  white  cotton 
trousers,  and  the  short  shirt  hangs  loose  outside.  The 
shirt  is  generally  white  but  may  be  coloured,  and  a 
short  coloured  jacket  is  worn  over  it,  varying  from 
plain  coarse  cotton  to  velvet  embroidered  with  gold 
and  pearls. 


26 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


The  indoor  chadar ,  or  “  prayer -chadar,”  is  often  of 
pretty  print  or  muslin,  and  when  Rubabeh  puts  on  her 
clean  white  trousers,  shirt  and  headkerchief,  with  a 
bright  frill  of  skirt  round  the  waist  and  a  pretty  j  acket 
and  chadar,  she  makes  a  very  bright  and  effective 
picture.  But  when  she  goes  out  she  must  put  on  dark 
overtrousers  which  cover  everything  up  to  the  waist, 
and  over  her  head,  in  place  of  the  pretty  prayer 
chadar,  she  must  throw  a  large  black  chadar  which  hangs 
over  everything,  while  a  long  strip  of  white  cotton 
hangs  down  in  front  of  her  face  with  drawn  thread 
work  in  front  of  the  eyes,  so  that  she  may  be  able  to 
see  without  being  seen. 

So,  unlike  our  streets,  the  Persian  ones  get  their 
colour  from  the  men  and  boys,  while  the  women  and 
girls  supply  the  darker,  duller  element.  Bright  blue 
is  the  commonest  colour  for  the  men’s  coats,  and  green 
is  not  uncommon,  while,  at  the  New  Year,  pink,  yellow, 
lilac  and  other  colours  make  the  streets  very  gay  indeed. 

The  children  are  dressed  just  like  their  fathers  and 
mothers,  and  are  little  imitation  men  and  women. 
The  little  tots  look  so  funny  sometimes ;  tiny  boys 
toddling  about  in  long  trousers,  frockcoats,  and  grown¬ 
up  hats,  and  wee  girls,  who  cannot  yet  speak  dis¬ 
tinctly,  in  the  long  trousers,  short  skirts  and  chadar s 
of  the  women. 

It  seems  to  suggest  that  no  great  distinction  is  made 
between  children  and  grown-ups,  and  really  there  is 
not  as  much  difference  as  we  find  at  home.  The 
children  are  taught  to  take  life  very  seriously  and  are 
treated  as  little  men  and  women  before  their  time,  and 


PERSIAN  CLOTHES 


27 


so  they  have  no  time  to  grow  up  into  proper  men 
and  women,  and  the  result  is  that  we  find  the  children 
too  grown-up  and  the  grown-ups  too  childish. 

You  will  find,  roughly  speaking,  if  you  look  at 
animals  that  the  higher  the  animal,  the  longer  its 
childhood  lasts,  because  it  has  more  growing  up  to 
do.  Caterpillars  and  tadpoles  look  after  themselves 
from  the  time  of  coming  out  of  the  egg,  mice  grow  up 
in  a  few  weeks,  horses  in  a  few  years,  and  man  takes 
longer  to  grow  up  than  any  animal. 

Now  Muhammad,  the  false  prophet  whom  the 
Persians  believe  in  and  obey,  had  no  such  high 
standard  to  set  before  them,  no  such  high  ideal  for 
them  to  grow  up  to,  as  our  Lord  J esus  Christ  set  before 
His  followers  and  enables  them  to  grow  up  to  ;  and 
so  his  religion  provides  only  a  short  time  for  growing 
up,  and  stunts  instead  of  assisting  the  growth  both 
of  individual  Muhammadans  and  of  Muhammadan 
nations. 

But  we  must  get  back  to  our  Persian  children  and 
their  clothes.  Their  day-clothes  we  have  seen ;  what 
about  their  night-clothes  ?  They  have  none.  They 
just  take  off  their  outer  garments  and  lie  down  in  the 
rest,  and  in  the  morning  they  just  get  up  and  put  on 
their  outer  garments  again.  Sometimes  they  do  not 
put  off  anything. 

“  We  are  so  tired,”  said  some  ladies  one  New  Year’s 
morning.  “  With  all  our  new  clothes  on  we  could  not 
lie  down,  we  should  have  crushed  them,  so  we  sat  up 
all  night.” 

Y ou  wonder  why  they  were  so  foolish  as  to  put  them 


28 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


on  on  New  Year’s  Eve  in  that  case,  instead  of  on  the 
morning  of  the  New  Year  itself.  The  reason  is  simple. 
A  Persian  only  puts  on  new  clothes  after  a  bath,  and 
a  bath  in  Persia  is  not  a  mere  matter  of  half  an  hour  ;  it 
takes  half  a  day,  and  sometimes  a  whole  one.  Some 
of  the  richer  people  have  baths  in  their  own  houses, 
but  most  people  go  to  the  public  baths. 

All  Persian  women  and  girls  love  a  day  at  the  bath, 
and  will  not  shorten  it  if  they  can  possibly  help  it. 
It  is  something  like  a  Turkish  bath,  and  there  they 
meet  their  friends  and  sit  about  in  steamy  rooms, 
talking,  laughing,  gossiping.  No  wonder  they  look 
forward  to  it,  for  a  Persian  girl  has  a  much  more 
secluded  and  restricted  life  than  girls  in  Europe  and 
her  intercourse  with  her  friends  is  much  less  free.  One 
girl  of  fifteen  told  me  that  except  for  her  weekly  visit 
to  the  bath  she  had  only  left  her  house  once  in  a  period 
of  six  months,  and  in  her  own  house  she  received  very 
few  visitors,  the  calls  of  her  English  missionary  friends 
being  great  events  for  the  whole  household. 

At  the  bath  they  wash  their  hair,  dye  it  with  henna, 
and  plait  it  up  in  a  dozen  or  more  long  plaits  which 
hang  down  their  backs  under  the  headkerchief  and 
chddar,  not  to  be  undone  again  probably  until  the  next 
visit  to  the  bath.  The  henna  is  a  reddish  dye  and 
though  it  does  not  show  on  black  hair  it  turns  fair  or 
grey  hair  a  carroty  red.  The  newcomer  to  Persia 
wonders  to  see  so  much  red  hair,  till  he  finds  that  this 
is  the  explanation.  But  the  boys  and  girls  nearly  all 
have  black  hair. 

Boys  have  their  heads  shaved,  though  sometimes 


PERSIAN  CLOTHES 


29 


a  handful  of  hair  is  left  over  each  ear,  or  a  lock  in  the 
middle  of  the  scalp.  This  shaving  is  probably  the 
reason  why  Persian  boys  always  keep  on  their  caps 
or  hats  indoors  and  only  take  them  off  to  sleep.  In¬ 
stead  of  taking  off  their  caps,  Persian  boys,  and  girls 
too,  take  off  their  shoes  when  they  come  into  a  room, 
and  this,  together  with  the  absence  of  chairs  and  tables 
explains  how  Persian  carpets  last  a  hundred  years. 
They  are  actually  more  valuable  after  several  years 
wear  than  when  they  were  new. 

Besides  the  hair,  the  fingernails,  palms  of  the  hands 
and  soles  of  the  feet  must,  by  Muhammadan  rules,  be 
dyed  with  henna.  The  richer  bathers  have  all  these 
things  done  by  the  bath  attendant,  but  the  poorer 
ones  do  it  all  themselves,  and  the  very  poor  often  omit 
the  henna,  except  on  special  occasions. 

Just  as  no  Persian  likes  to  put  on  clean  clothes 
without  going  to  the  bath,  so  he  will  not  go  to  the  bath 
without  putting  on  clean  clothes. 

“  Khanum,  give  me  a  new  shirt,”  begged  one  old 
woman,  displaying  a  ragged  one  she  had  on.  “  For 
want  of  one  I  have  not  been  able  to  go  to  the  bath 
since  this  was  new.” 

But  where  there’s  a  will  there’s  a  way,  and  some 
people  who  are  too  poor  to  have  a  change  of  clothes  go 
to  the  bath,  take  off  their  clothes  and  wash  them,  and 
then  wait  in  the  bath  till  they  are  dry. 

There  is  a  large  tank  in  which  the  people  wash  and 
a  ceremonial  washing  requires  a  dip  right  under  the 
water.  The  usual  idea  of  changing  the  water  is  to 
take  out  canfuls  to  water  the  tiles  round,  and  then  fill 


30 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


up  the  tank  again  with  clean  water,  so  simply  adding  a 
little  clean  water  to  the  dirty. 

During  a  cholera  epidemic  the  Governor  of  a  Persian 
town  ordered  that  the  bath  water  should  be  changed 
at  least  once  a  month.  One  cannot  help  wondering 
whether  the  monthly  change  was  carried  out  as  de¬ 
scribed  above,  and  I  am  sure  you  would  prefer  the 
little  village  baths  where  there  is  often  so  small  a 
tank  that  no  one  can  get  into  it,  and  they  ladle  out  the 
water  and  wash  in  basins. 

The  common  use  of  the  one  tank,  with  the  only 
partial  changing  of  the  water,  and  the  general  care¬ 
lessness  of  infection,  make  the  bath  one  of  the  greatest 
means  of  spreading  disease. 

The  Muhammadan  religion  provides  strict  rules  as 
to  clothes  and  baths  and  washing.  In  the  washings 
before  prayers  it  even  decides  which  hand  and  which 
side  of  the  face  shall  be  washed  first.  And  all  this 
the  parents  teach  the  children  as  carefully  as,  gener¬ 
ally  much  more  carefully  than,  such  matters  as  truth¬ 
fulness,  honesty  and  kindness. 

Here  again  we  see  Muhammad  giving  his  people 
what  we  may  call  “  nursery  rules,”  treating  them  as 
children,  while  our  Master  expects  us  to  grow  up  so 
that  we  can  arrange  these  matters  for  ourselves. 

As  children  we  must  live  under  detailed  rules,  but 
always  with  the  object  before  us  of  growing  up  right. 
The  very  fact  that  the  detailed  rules  of  Muham¬ 
madanism  are  binding  through  life  shows  that  the 
Muhammadan  is  not  expected  to  grow  up  as  we 
understand  growing  up. 


PERSIAN  GAMES  AND  TOYS 


31 


CHAPTER  V 

PERSIAN  GAMES  AND  TOYS 

It  is  curious  to  go  thousands  of  miles  to  Persia — to 
cross  vast  sandy  deserts — and  at  last  to  find  little 
skirted  boys  in  the  mudwalled  streets  playing  tipcat 
just  like  their  counterparts  in  our  own  cities.  Hop¬ 
scotch  and  duck-stone  too  are  favourite  games,  and 
kites  are  very  popular.  The  kites  are  large  and  square 
and  fly  very  well,  and  the  boys  often  fly  them  from  the 
roofs,  sending  “  messages  ”  up  the  string  just  as  our 
boys  do.  There  is  a  regular  game  of  “  wolf  ”  too, 
played  almost  exactly  as  it  is  in  many  parts  of  the 
world  by  English-speaking  children.  I  am  sorry  to 
say  that  pitch  and  toss  and  gambling  with  cards  are 
very  common. 

There  is  nothing  like  cricket  and  football,  but  in 
Yezd  there  is  a  kind  of  “  rounders'’  which  is  played 
for  a  fortnight  only  at  the  New  Year — the  Persian 
New  Year,  that  is,  in  March.  Any  evening  during 
that  fortnight  if  you  go  out  into  the  desert  just  outside 
the  town  walls  you  will  see  a  crowd  of  men  and  boys, 
some  playing,  some  watching.  And  any  day  during 
that  fortnight  if  you  visit  the  women,  some  small  boy 
will  proudly  show  his  chaftar  or  rounders  stick.  For 
a  week  or  two  afterwards  an  occasional  chaftar  may 
be  seen  but  after  that  it  is  a  puzzle  where  they  dis¬ 
appear  to,  not  one  is  to  be  seen  till  the  next  New 
Year. 

The  little  girls  in  Persia,  as  everywhere  else,  depend 


32 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


largely  on  dolls.  The  dolls  are  home  made — rag-dolls 
without  much  shape,  with  the  features  worked  in  fine 
cross-stitch,  and  dressed  of  course,  as  Persians.  Good 
European  dolls  are  great  treasures,  even  to  the  women, 
and  I  knew  one  rich  lady  who  had  eight  very  nice  ones 
all  for  herself. 

In  Shiraz  they  make  wooden  horses  for  the  children 
and  little  models  of  the  kajavehs  or  covered  panniers  in 
which  women  and  children  often  travel.  In  Yezd, 
where  the  workers  in  clay  are  cleverer  than  the 
carpenters,  little  model  kuzehs  or  waterpots  are 
commoner  and  clay  money-boxes  and  nightingales. 
Roughly  moulded  and  gaily  painted  clay  animals 
and  men  too,  are  made  in  quantities — but  only  at  the 
“  Festival  of  the  Sacrifice  ”  when  a  camel  is  sacrificed. 
At  the  time  of  this  festival  there  are  stalls  and  shops  in 
the  bazaars  full  of  clay  toys  and  toy  drums,  but  they 
cannot  be  got  at  any  other  time  of  year,  and  as  clay 
animals  are  quickly  broken  they  are  only  to  be  seen 
for  a  very  short  time.  Among  the  toys  may  some¬ 
times  be  seen  a  figure  evidently  copied  from  an 
Italian  statuette  of  the  Virgin  and  Child — copied  by 
Muhammadans  without  any  idea  of  what  it  represents. 
But  when  all  is  said  the  games  and  toys  are  very  few 
in  Persia,  as  compared  with  those  you  are  accustomed 
to.  Perhaps  they  are  not  so  much  needed  there. 
The  grown-ups  are  so  childish  that  it  is  no  great  hard¬ 
ship  to  a  child  to  practice  grown-up  ways  instead  of 
playing  games  of  its  own.  There  is  so  much  in  ordinary 
grown-up  life  that  is  really  a  very  good  substitute  for  a 
game — the  elaborate  greetings  to  be  gone  through 


PERSIAN  GAMES  AND  TOYS 


33 


with  each  person  in  turn  according  to  their  importance, 
the  tea  served  in  tiny  cups  no  bigger  than  a  child’s 
teaset,  the  sweet-eating,  the  pressing  of  roseheads  into 
the  visitor’s  hand,  or  the  more  elaborate  arrangement 
of  stiff  sticks  closely  covered  with  roses,  the  presenta¬ 
tion  of  tiny  unripe  first-fruits,  of  melon  seeds  or  nuts 
ornamented  with  fluffy  bits  of  silk,  of  oranges  inlaid 
with  velvet,  all  these  would  seem  a  very  attractive 
game  to  a  child.  Perhaps  they  really  prefer  to  join 
in  the  games  their  elders  play  in  earnest  rather  than 
play  their  own  in  jest.  The  conversation  too  is  seldom 
over  their  heads,  but  generally  interests  them  as  much 
as  their  parents.  The  entertainments  of  the  elders  are 
of  a  kind  to  suit  the  children  too.  What  child  does 
not  enjoy  the  Fifth  of  November  with  its  Guy  Fawkes, 
its  fireworks,  and  its  bonfires  ?  and  the  Persians,  too, 
have  their  firework  day,  when  they  burn  not  Guy 
Fawkes,  but  ‘Omar,  the  Muhammadan  leader  who 
conquered  Persia.  They  do  not  burn  him,  because  he 
conquered  Persia,  but  because  he  was  Khalif  or  head 
of  the  Muhammadans,  and  the  Persians  say  that  ‘Ali, 
Muhammad’s  son-in-law,  ought  to  have  been  Khalif 
and  that  ‘Omar  was  a  usurper.  There  are  torchlight 
processions,  in  which  ‘Omar’s  effigy  is  carried,  bonfires 
illuminations,  and  fireworks  in  plenty. 

All  the  year  round  fireworks  and  illuminations  are 
very  popular,  so  much  so  that  the  main  work  of 
the  Government  Arsenals  seems  to  be  the  manu¬ 
facture  of  fireworks.  Another  very  popular  form  of 
entertainment  is  the  ruzehkham ,  or  religious  reading. 
It  is  considered  a  very  pious  act  for  a  man  to  have  a 
c 


34 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


ruzehkhdnl  in  his  house  in  the  two  months  of  Muharram, 
and  his  friends  come  in  crowds  and  greatly  prefer  it  to 
an  ordinary  party.  Muharram  is  the  time  of  mourning 
for  Husain  and  Hasan,  Muhammad's  grandsons. 

The  courtyard  is  crowded  with  people  sitting  on  the 
ground,  and  as  the  professional  reader  recites  the  story 
of  the  death  of  Husain  and  Hasan  the  people  sway 
their  bodies  to  and  fro  to  the  rhythm  and  gradually 
work  up  their  excitement.  Then  they  all  begin  to 
beat  on  their  bare  chests  with  the  open  hand  and  raise 
a  wail  that  gradually  grows  in  strength,  till  the  wailing 
and  the  sound  of  the  blows  can  be  heard  several  streets 
off  and  the  tears  stream  down  their  cheeks.  It  is 
very  exciting,  and  grown-ups  and  children  alike  enjoy 
it  thoroughly. 

But  the  day  of  the  year  is  the  day  of  the  death  of 
Husain  when  the  nakhl  is  carried  and  the  great 
passion  play  of  the  death  of  Husain  and  Hasan  is 
played. 

This  is  a  general  holiday  and  all  through  the  early 
part  of  the  day,  the  villagers  come  trooping  in  to  the 
towns.  The  streets  are  now  full  and  processions  pass 
along  them  carrying  the  nakhls  from  the  squares  out¬ 
side  the  smaller  mosques.  In  some  towns,  too,  they 
carry  alams,  or  long  poles  with  a  series  of  handkerchiefs 
tied  to  them.  When  the  processions  from  two  different 
quarters  of  the  town  meet  there  is  generally  a  struggle, 
often  ending  in  a  free  fight ;  so  both  alams  and  nakhls 
are  now  forbidden  in  some  towns. 

I  only  once  met  a  procession  myself,  and  then  it 
most  politely  halted  to  allow  me  to  pass  comfortably. 


PERSIAN  GAMES  AND  TOYS 


35 


The  smaller  processions  being  over,  everyone  crowds 
to  the  large  squares  to  see  the  carrying  of  the  great 
nakhls  of  the  big  mosques. 

The  nakhls  are  wooden  frameworks  carried  on  poles 
and  hung  on  one  side  with  looking-glasses,  on  the  other 
with  daggers.  Those  in  the  large  squares  are  of 
immense  weight.  They  are  said  on  this  day  to  be 
carried  across  the  square  by  Fatimeh,  Muhammad's 
daughter,  but  it  is  a  work  of  great  merit  to  help  her, 
so  as  many  as  can  possibly  get  within  reach  of  the 
poles  join  in  the  work,  and  the  nakhl  moves  across  the 
square.  But  the  afternoon  is  the  best  part  when  the 
great  play  of  the  death  of  Husain  and  Hasan  is  acted. 
Then,  indeed,  there  is  wailing  and  beating  of  breasts. 
“  I  enjoy  it  more  than  anything  in  the  year,"  one  lady 
told  me. 

One  year  there  was  a  little  boy  dangerously  ill  with 
inflammation  of  the  lungs  when  the  great  day  came 
round.  It  was  considered  quite  out  of  the  question  for 
any  of  the  family  to  stay  away  from  the  play  to  nurse 
him,  and  being  a  boy  he  was  not  likely  to  obey  the 
woman  servant  who  was  being  left  in  charge  of  the 
house.  “  He  would  have  been  all  over  the  roof  trying 
to  get  a  glimpse  of  the  play,"  his  mother  said,  “  and 
probably  would  have  fallen  off,  so  we  had  to  take  him." 
So  they  took  a  mattress  for  him,  and  he  lay  and  listened 
to  the  play  from  a  gallery,  and  of  course  got  up  to 
watch  the  exciting  parts.  It  very  nearly  killed  him, 
but  they  seemed  to  feel  they  had  taken  the  only  reason¬ 
able  course,  and  he  eventually  recovered. 


36 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


CHAPTER  VI 

PERSIAN  SWEETS 

In  a  Persian  town  there  is  a  curious  arrangement  of 
the  shops.  All  the  shops  where  one  kind  of  article  is 
sold  are  generally  grouped  together  in  one  street  or 
bazar.  To  buy  shoes  we  go  to  the  shoe  bazaar,  for 
cooking  pots  to  the  copper  bazaar. 

The  copper  or  brass  bazaar  is  almost  always  worth 
a  visit  in  a  Persian  town.  It  is  a  long  roofed-in  street 
with  a  continuous  row  of  small  shops  on  either  side. 
The  “  shop  ”  consists  of  a  lock-up  room  with  a  small 
mud  platform  in  front  of  it,  raised  a  foot -or  two  above 
the  street.  On  this  platform  are  two  or  three  stumps 
on  which  the  pots  are  placed  for  hammering,  for  after 
being  heated  over  a  charcoal  brazier  they  are  hammered 
and  beaten  into  the  required  shape,  thickness  and 
pattern.  On  nearly  every  platform  is  a  man,  some¬ 
times  two  or  three  men  and  boys,  hammering  each  on 
his  copper  pot  and  the  noise  produced  by  a  hundred 
or  more  men  hammering  vigorously  on  copper  vessels, 
which  give  different  notes  according  to  size,  shape  and 
thickness,  is  deafening,  but  not  wholly  disagreeable.* 
But  there  is  another  bazaar  well  worth  a  visit  in 
Yezd  at  anyrate.  *  The  shops  here  have  counters  rising 
in  tiers,  so  as  to  display  the  very  tempting  goods  to 
advantage.  The  goods  themselves  are  chiefly  laid  out 
on  huge  round  copper  trays,  about  a  yard  across  and 

*  This  description  is  taken  from  the  Shiraz  copper  bazaar. 


PERSIAN  SWEETS  37 

very  heavy,  made  in  the  bazaar  we  have  just  left,  but 
whitened  over,  as  all  copper  vessels  are. 

Surely  we  are  in  Fairyland  at  last.  Shop  after 
shop  shows  tier  upon  tier  of  the  most  delicious  sweets 
in  the  most  tempting  profusion.  Here  is  pashnak, 
looking  like  cotton  wool  and  tasting  something  like 
butter  creams.  There  are  two  or  three  kinds  of  almond 
toffee,  or  son — some  with  green  pistachio  nuts  in  it. 
Huge  fondants,  or  Idz ,  in  diamond-shaped  cakes,  nearly 
as  large  as  the  ordinary  penny  fancy  cakes  in  England, 
alternate  with  similar  cakes  of  green  pari-taus  (pea¬ 
cock’s  feathers),  and  brown  baghalavd,  richer  and 
stickier  than  either. 

Those  white  nuqls  are  delicious  burnt  almonds,  which 
seem  to  melt  away  in  your  mouth,  the  long  ones  have 
strips  of  cocoa-nut  instead  of  almonds,  and  the  little 
round  ones  burnt  peas.  Here  are  little  flat  round 
cakes  of  gaz,  a  kind  of  nougat  only  made  in  Isfahan, 
but  sent  to  all  the  towns  in  Persia.  One  variety  of  gaz 
contains  little  sticks  of  a  gum  which  is  supposed  to 
cure  rheumatism,  a  very  pleasant  remedy. 

There  is  a  great  bowl  a  foot  across,  and  over  an  inch 
thick  made  wholly  of  sugar  candy,  which  has  taken 
the  shape  of  the  basin  in  which  it  crystallised,  and  in 
the  middle  of  which  three  long  sticks  of  sugar  candy 
stand  up  high  above  the  top.  Such  a  bowl  a  kind 
Persian  friend  sent  to  a  missionary’s  little  boy,  when 
he  was  a  few  days  old,  to  provide  him  with  “  sugar- 
candy  water,”  which  is  considered  particularly  good 
for  young  babies.  These  are  only  a  few  of  the  sweets, 
there  are  too  many  to  mention  all.  Some  kinds  are 


38 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


only  made  in  the  fast  month  of  Ramazan,  and  others 
only  at  the  New  Year.  The  sweets  are  delicious  but 
they  are  as  a  rule  very  simple  and  very  sweet.  So  the 
Persians  do  not  hand  them  round  in  little  paper  bags, 
nor  even  in  pretty  little  boxes  ;  they  pile  them  on 
plates  and  dishes,  as  we  do  cakes  ;  and,  as  you  have 
seen,  many  of  them  are  as  large  as  cakes.  When  you 
go  to  visit  a  Persian,  you  have  not  tea  and  cakes,  but 
tea  and  sweets.  For  a  quiet  call  on  quiet  people,  two 
or  three  plates  of  sweets  are  enough,  but  at  a  regular 
sweet-eating  at  a  big  house,  one  or  two  great  trays  will 
be  set  on  the  ground  before  the  guests,  each  with  five 
dishes  of  sweets  on  it,  each  dish  holding  about  a  pound 
and  a  half  to  two  pounds  of  sweets.  The  Persian 
women  are  often  very  pressing  with  their  sweets,  even 
to  the  point  of  putting  them  into  their  visitors’  mouths, 
and  in  their  hospitality  they  sometimes  over-estimate 
the  size  of  the  mouth.  Often  too,  the  guests  are  made 
to  carry  home  what  is  left,  or  a  part  of  it,  tied  up  in  a 
handkerchief.  This  is  so  common  that  where  the 
European  is  shy  of  pressing  the  custom,  the  Persian 
ladies  will  sometimes  carry  home  the  remains  of 
European  dishes  out  of  courtesy,  to  show  that  they 
have  appreciated  them.  This  custom  probably  exists 
and  has  existed  in  many  Eastern  countries,  and  may 
very  likely  be  the  reason  why  Joseph  gave  Benjamin 
five  times  as  much  as  his  other  brothers.  Benjamin 
was  probably  intended  to  take  what  was  over  away 
with  him. 

I  was  visiting  some  Persian  women  one  day,  and 
they  asked  for  my  handkerchief  to  wrap  up  the  re- 


PERSIAN  SWEETS 


39 


mainder  of  the  sweets  in.  I  apologised  for  being  un¬ 
able  to  take  them  as  I  had  not  a  clean  handkerchief, 
on  which  they  all  eagerly  assured  me  that  it  did  not 
matter  in  the  least,  they  would  be  quite  content  with 
the  one  I  had.  The  Persian  dastmal  or  handkerchief 
serves  every  purpose  except  the  one  we  connect  it  with. 
Your  Persian  servant,  always  carries  a  large  coloured 
one  in  his  pocket.  He  dusts  the  rooms  with  it,  puts 
his  purchases  from  the  bazar  into  it,  polishes  your 
boots  with  it  before  you  enter  a  Persian  house,  and 
carries  home  sweets  or  nuts  in  it. 

At  the  New  Year,  there  are  twenty-one  days  set 
apart  for  holiday  making  and  visiting,  and  in  every 
house  tea  and  sweets  and  sherbet  are  ready  for  all 
comers.  In  those  twenty-one  days  people  are  ex¬ 
pected  to  visit  all  their  friends,  and  even  with  strict 
moderation  the  most  sweet -loving  schoolboy  of  your 
acquaintance  would  probably  be  glad  of  a  rest  by  the 
end  of  the  three  weeks. 

All  this  sounds  delightful,  doesn’t  it  ?  But  un¬ 
fortunately  it  is  more  for  the  grown-ups  than  for  the 
children.  The  children  like  sweets  well  enough  and 
get  a  good  many,  but  they  have  not  the  same  oppor¬ 
tunities  as  the  grown-ups. 

But  sweets  have  their  serious  uses  among  the 
Persians.  We  have  seen  that  rheumatism  may  be 
cured  with  nougat,  and  we  find  that  sweets  in  general 
are  very  strengthening.  It  is  not  at  all  uncommon, 
after  a  small  operation  or  the  extraction  of  a  tooth,  to 
see  the  friends  pressing  sugar  or  sweets  into  the 
patient’s  mouth,  to  restore  her  strength  after  the  shock, 


40 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


and  in  the  same  way  after  a  fright  a  few  sweets  make 
you  feel  much  better. 

Bread  and  sweets  are  not  an  uncommon  dinner, 
and  a  child  who  was  ordered  by  the  doctor  to  take 
plenty  of  milk  because  it  was  good  strengthening  food, 
was  given  three-quarters  of  a  pound  of  sweets  for  her 
dinner  instead.  “  So  much  more  strengthening  than 
milk/’  the  mother  said. 

Persian  sweets  are  very  soft  and  in  the  dry  climate 
quickly  get  hard  and  lose  their  first  freshness,  and 
to  offer  a  Persian  stale  sweets  is  like  offering  you 
stale  cakes.  They  are  at  their  best  only  on  the 
day  they  are  made,  and  the  servant  sent  to  buy  sweets 
will  sit  down  with  his  tray  of  plates  at  the  shop-door 
and  wait  till  the  new  sweets  are  ready,  when  they  can 
be  put  quite  fresh  and  new  on  the  plates  on  which  they 
are  to  be  served.  In  Yezd,  where  the  best  sweets  are 
made,  our  servants  seemed  to  regard  the  moving  of 
sweets  to  a  fresh  plate  much  as  we  should  the  removal 
of  a  pie  to  a  fresh  pie-dish,  and  many  sorts  are  certainly 
the  worse  for  being  shifted  after  they  have  got  cold. 
All  better-class  Persians  make  their  own  sweets  at  home 
and  consider  “  shop  sweets  ”  very  inferior. 

The  fame  of  Persian  sherbet  has  spread  far,  and 
nearly  every  visitor  to  Persia  looks  forward  to  a  treat 
when  he  tastes  it.  But  it  by  no  means  comes  up  to 
expectation.  It  is  often  made  fresh  in  the  presence 
of  the  guests,  so  the  recipe  is  no  secret.  A  sugar  loaf 
is  put  in  a  basin,  by  preference  a  pot  pourri  bowl,  and 
cold  water  is  poured  over  it,  and  it  is  allowed  to  melt 
with  an  occasional  stir.  A  little  rosewater  is  then 


PERSIAN  PRAYERS 


41 


added  to  flavour  it,  and  it  is  handed  round  in  glasses, 
with  ice  if  possible.  At  meals,  however,  the  bowl 
is  placed  on  the  tablecloth, — there  is  no  table, — and  a 
large  carved  wooden  spoon  is  passed  to  each  in  turn 
from  which  to  drink  it. 

Sometimes  lime  or  orange  juice  is  offered  as  an 
alternative  flavour  to  rosewater,  which  makes  it  much 
more  palatable  to  Europeans.  But  insipid  as  the 
ordinary  sherbet  is,  it  seems  the  most  delicious  com¬ 
pound  imaginable  when  it  is  taken,  well-iced,  after  a 
long  walk  with  the  thermometer  at  ioo°  in  the  shade. 
Perhaps  that  is  why  it  has  been  so  much  praised. 

Another  favourite  beverage  is  sekunjibin,  which  is 
like  raspberry  vinegar  with  mint  instead  of  raspberry. 

Sherbet  and  good  things  to  eat  figure  largely  in 
Muhammad’s  description  of  the  joys  of  Heaven. 
His  ideals  were  ideals  that  did  not  need  much  growing 
up  to.  He  expected  his  followers  to  have  childish  ideas 
and  childish  desires  even  in  heaven. 


CHAPTER  VII 

PERSIAN  PRAYERS 

Persian  boys  and  girls  need  not  say  their  prayers 
till  they  are  seven  years  old.  Sometimes  they  begin 
sooner,  but  that  is  considered  unnecessarily  good. 
They  are  not  to  be  beaten  for  not  saying  them  till  they 
are  ten,  and  I  have  not  seen  many  children  under  ten 
years  old  saying  their  prayers.  We  cannot  remember 
learning  to  pray,  for  as  soon  as  we  could  understand 


42 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


anything  about  God,  we  were  taught  to  ask  Him  to 
take  care  of  us,  to  ask  Him  to  forgive  us  when  we  were 
naughty,  and  to  help  us  to  be  good,  to  thank  Him  for 
His  kindness  and  His  gifts.  It  is  so  simple  that  a 
child  of  three  or  four  can  come  to  God  in  this  way,  we 
need  not  wait  till  we  are  seven  to  bring  simple  petitions 
to  our  Heavenly  Father.  But  little  Ghulam  Husain’s 
prayers  are  far  from  simple.  He  has  first  to  learn  to 
wash  his  face,  hands  and  arms,  and  feet  and  legs. 
“  That  does  not  need  much  teaching,”  you  say.  "  He 
can  surely  wash  himself  at  that  age.”  But  there  is  a 
right  and  a  wrong  way  of  washing  in  Persia  before 
prayers.  There  is  a  right  and  a  wrong  side  of  your  face  to 
wash  first,  there  is  a  right  and  a  wrong  hand  and  a  right 
and  a  wrong  foot  to  wash  first.  If  a  Persian  is  very 
religious  and  careful  there  is  even  a  right  and  a  wrong 
side  of  his  arm  and  leg  to  wash  first,  but  few  Persian 
children  are  as  careful  as  that.  No  soap  is  wanted, 
just  plain  water,  or,  if  there  is  no  water,  sand.  So  our 
our  little  Ghulam  Husain  learns  his  washings,  and  now 
he  is  ready  to  learn  the  prayers  themselves,  which  are 
all  in  Arabic  so  that  he  does  not  understand  them. 

He  is  shown  the  direction  of  Mecca  to  which  he  must 
always  turn  when  saying  them,  and  he  is  taught  when 
to  stand,  when  to  kneel,  when  to  bow  himself  till  his 
forehead  touches  the  ground,  and  when  to  make 
various  gestures.  And  when  he  has  learnt  all  this  he 
is  ready  to  begin  saying  his  prayers  regularly,  and  he 
is  told  that  if  he  says  them  correctly,  and  with  the 
right  movements,  they  will  be  pleasing  to  God,  and 
count  as  good  works.  He  must  say  them  three  times 


PERSIANS  AT  PRAYER 


PERSIAN  PRAYERS 


43 


a  day,  and  he  cannot  choose  his  time.  When  the 
prayer-call  sounds  from  the  mosque  roofs,  and  is 
taken  up  by  people  on  the  house  roofs,  he  must  leave 
what  he  is  doing,  and  wash  and  say  his  prayers — the 
same  prayers  every  time.  First  in  the  early  dawn, 
before  sunrise,  he  hears  the  call,  and  he  must  get  out 
of  bed  for  washing  and  prayers.  In  the  summer  it  may 
be  as  early  as  four  o'clock,  in  winter  not  till  six  or 
seven.  Then,  again,  when  the  sun-dial  on  the  mosque 
marks  noon,  the  call  is  heard,  and  again  at  sunset, 
and  each  time  the  prayers  must  be  said  within  half 
an  hour.  Half  an  hour's  grace  is  allowed,  so  if 
Persians  have  visitors  when  the  prayer-call  sounds, 
they  are  able  to  go  in  turns  to  say  their  prayers,  so  as 
not  to  leave  the  visitor  alone. 

Some  Persians  are  very  particular  about  their  prayers, 
but  many  are  not  so  particular  and  will  leave  them 
unsaid  if  there  is  any  excuse ;  and,  as  in  other  religions, 
there  are  people  who  neglect  their  prayers  altogether. 

There  are  many  who  are  very  regular  in  their  prayers 
and  very  particular  as  to  the  direction  towards  which 
they  face,  and  their  positions  and  gestures  at  various 
parts  of  the  prayers,  but  who  are  not  in  the  least  really 
reverent  over  them.  Medical  missionaries  especially 
cannot  always  choose  the  time  of  their  visits,  and 
sometimes  cannot  avoid  prayer-time.  Then,  instead 
of  going  to  a  quiet  room,  the  Muhammadans  often  say 
their  prayers  in  the  room  where  the  missionary  is  being 
entertained,  and  the  conversation  is  never  hushed  for 
them ;  indeed,  they  will  often  themselves  join  in  the  con¬ 
versation  even  while  they  are  supposed  to  be  praying. 


44 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


One  day  a  party  of  women  from  a  Mulla’s  house 
were  visiting  a  missionary,  when  the  evening  prayer- 
call  sounded. 

“  We  shall  hardly  have  time  to  get  home  in  half  an 
hour,”  the  Mulla’s  wife  said.  “  May  I  say  my  prayers 
here  ?  ”  The  missionary  readily  gave  her  consent, 
but  only  the  one  lady  availed  herself  of  the  permission, 
and,  having  asked  in  which  direction  Mecca  lay,  placed 
her  prayer-stone  in  front  of  her  and  knelt  down  to  say 
her  prayers. 

The  rest  went  on  talking  loudly  round  her,  calling 
out  and  stretching  across  just  in  front  of  her  in  a 
way  that  must  have  attracted  her  attention.  When 
the  missionary  asked  them  to  be  quiet  they  assured 
her  that  their  friend  did  not  mind,  and  she  herself 
turned  from  her  prayers  to  beg  them  not  to  stop  for 
her.  But  the  missionary  insisted  on  quiet  until  the 
prayers  were  over,  explaining  that  it  was  not  a 
question  of  respect  to  the  lady,  but  of  reverence  to 
God,  and,  in  the  conversation  which  naturally  followed, 
she  was  able  to  tell  them  some  of  the  Bible  teaching  on 
prayer. 

The  prayer-stone  is  a  small  slab  of  about  an  inch 
and  a  half  across,  made  of  the  earth  of  Kerbela  where 
Husain,  the  grandson  of  Muhammad  was  killed.  The 
Kerbela  earth  is  said  to  be  scented  with  “  the  blood  of 
the  martyrs,”  and  is  much  used  for  prayer-stones  and 
rosaries. 

A  Muhammadan  places  his  prayer-stone  on  the 
ground  before  him  when  he  says  his  prayers.  If 
anyone  passes  in  front  of  a  Muhammadan  as  he 


PERSIAN  PRAYERS 


45 


is  saying  his  prayers  it  is  supposed  to  greatly 
reduce  their  value.  But  if  he  puts  the  prayer- 
stone  in  front  of  him  it  acts  as  a  church  wall 
and  cuts  him  off  from  the  outside  world,  and  nothing 
passing  on  the  far  side  of  the  stone  can  affect  his 
prayers.  If  he  has  no  prayer-stone  he  sometimes 
draws  a  line  on  the  earth  instead,  and  this  is  said  to 
be  just  as  effectual.  At  certain  points  in  the  prayers 
the  forehead  must  touch  the  ground,  and  when  a 
prayer-stone  is  used  the  forehead  touches  the  prayer- 
stone,  and  perhaps  the  holiness  of  the  earth  touched 
is  supposed  to  increase  the  value  of  the  prayers. 

After  the  regular  Arabic  prayers  have  been  said 
any  further  prayers  may  be  added  in  Persian,  but  the 
people  seem  generally  to  content  themselves  with  the 
set  prayers  and  to  be  shy  of  adding  any  of  their  own 
wording,  and  in  any  case  the  Arabic  prayers  are  con¬ 
sidered  the  more  important. 

Although  the  Persians  use  their  prayers  like  charms, 
repeating  forms  which  convey  to  them  no  meaning, 
yet  they  have  great  faith  in  the  efficacy  of  prayers  as 
charms.  One  Sunday  a  Persian  woman  brought  her 
little  girl  to  the  doctor’s  house,  covered  with  small¬ 
pox  and  very  ill.  Finding  that  it  was  service  time 
she  thought  the  prayers  might  do  the  child  good, 
so  she  put  off  asking  for  medicine  till  later,  and,  hiding 
the  child  under  her  chadar,  she  sat  down  among  the 
other  women  and  children  through  the  whole  service. 

I  have  never  known  Persians  refuse  Christian 
prayers  over  their  sick  friends,  and  generally  they 
join  in  with  a  heartfelt  Amen  to  prayers  which,  they 


46 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


have  been  able  to  understand.  At  one  house  where 
they  were  afraid  of  the  medicine  they  entreated  the 
missionary  doctor  to  come  daily  to  pray  over  the 
patient.  The  patient  was  one  of  five  cases  of  typhoid 
fever  in  the  house.  The  others  were  being  treated  by 
a  Persian  doctor,  but  this  woman  had  very  serious 
complications  and  seemed  so  unlikely  to  recover  that 
he  suggested  their  calling  in  a  Christian  doctor  for  her. 
For  many  days  she  lay  quite  unconscious,  but  every 
day  the  missionary  walked  a  mile  and  a  half  to  pray 
beside  her,  and  every  day  the  same  entreaty  was  re¬ 
peated,  “You  will  come  again  to-morrow,  won’t 
you  ?  ”  And  the  prayers  were  answered,  for  at  last 
signs  of  improvement  appeared,  and  the  poor  woman 
was  restored  to  health  and  strength  again. 

God  has  given  us  a  wonderful  privilege  in  allowing 
us  to  come  freely  to  Him  as  our  Father,  and  lay  all 
our  joys  and  sorrows,  troubles  and  perplexities  before 
Him. 

“  Oh  !  What  peace  we  often  forfeit, 

Oh  !  What  needless  pain  we  bear, 

All  because  we  do  not  carry 

Everything  to  God  in  prayer  !  ” 

And,  if  that  is  true  of  us,  how  much  more  true  it  is 
of  the  Muhammadans  who  do  not  know  God  as  their 
Father,  who  do  not  know  that  God  is  love,  who  do 
not  know  that  they  may  carry  everything  to  God  in 
prayer.  When  we  think  of  the  want  of  peace,  the 
needless  pain,  the  sin,  the  sorrow,  the  wretchedness  in 
Muhammadan  lands,  and  yet  see  the  people  so  ready 
to  pray,  surely  it  is  our  plain  and  urgent  duty  to  teach 


FASTING  AND  PILGRIMAGES 


47 


them  how  to  pray,  as  our  Lord  has  taught  us,  and  to 
teach  them  to  Whom  they  must  pray — not  to  an  un¬ 
knowable,  unloving  Allah,  but  to  a  tender,  pitying 
Father,  Who  so  loved  them  that  He  gave  His  only 
begotten  Son  to  die  for  their  salvation. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

FASTING  AND  PILGRIMAGES 

One  month  in  every  year  Muhammadans  have  to  fast. 

Persian  boys  begin  to  fast  at  twelve  years  old,  but 
the  girls  have  to  begin  at  nine.  Sometimes  they 
begin  sooner  if  they  want  to  store  up  merit  early. 
But  even  little  four- year-old  Ibrahim,  who  is  considered 
too  young  to  join  in  the  fast,  shares  it  to  a  certain 
degree.  For  no  one  is  going  to  cook  anything  for  him 
or  make  him  his  usual  cup  of  tea  when  they  may  not 
share  it.  He  gets  a  bit  of  dry  bread  and  a  drink  of 
water  when  he  wants  it,  but  little  more  all  through  the 
day. 

“  It  makes  me  hungry  to  see  him  eating/'  his  mother 
said. 

The  name  of  the  fast-month  is  Ramazan,  and 
through  Ramazan  it  is  often  difficult  to  get  eggs,  be¬ 
cause  the  sweetmakers  buy  them  up  to  make  sweets. 
It  is  a  great  month  for  sweets,  and  there  are  several 
kinds  that  are  only  made  in  Ramazan  ;  and,  so  far  from 
having  “  self-denial  boxes,"  as  many  Christians  do  in 
Lent,  the  more  devout  Muhammadan  servants  ask 
for  an  advance  of  wages  to  buy  better  food  in  Ramazan 


48 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


This  all  seems  strange  in  a  fast-month,  but  a 
Muhammadan  fast  only  lasts  from  dawn  to  dark. 
At  night  people  may  eat  what  they  like,  and  they  take 
full  advantage  of  the  permission  and  have  nightly 
feasts,  ending  up  with  a  great  feast  on  the  last  night. 

Boys  and  girls  are  not  late  for  supper  in  Ramazan. 
They  gather  round  the  tablecloth  as  the  time  draws 
near,  ready  to  start  directly  the  signal  is  given  that 
it  is  dark.  In  towns  there  is  generally  a  gun  fired,  and 
at  the  sound  of  the  gun  the  meal  is  begun  in  every 
house. 

One  day  such  a  party  was  waiting  round  the  supper, 
listening  for  the  gun,  and  they  got  hungrier  and 
hungrier,  but  they  heard  no  gun  and  waited  on.  At 
last  they  realised  that  the  wind  had  carried  the  sound 
away  from  them,  and  they  had  fasted  far  longer  than 
they  need  have  done.  This  was  bad  enough,  but  another 
family  fared  worse,  for  they  overslept  themselves  in 
the  morning,  and  woke  to  find  they  had  missed  their 
breakfast  and  must  eat  nothing  till  night. 

People  might  differ  as  to  when  it  was  dark,  so  a  test 
has  been  appointed — as  long  as  you  can  distinguish  a 
black  thread  from  a  white  one  it  is  light,  and  you  must 
fast. 

It  does  not  sound  a  very  difficult  fast,  and  in  winter, 
when  the  days  are  short,  it  is  not  so  bad,  but  on  a  long 
summer  day  it  is  very  hard.  No  food,  no  drink,  and 
a  blazing  sun  all  day.  It  takes  a  plucky  boy  or  girl 
to  get  through  it  without  complaining.  It  is  no  wonder 
that  in  Ramazan-  “  bed-time  ”  is  forgotten  and  all 
the  children  sit  up  half  the  night  and  sleep  half  the 


FASTING  AND  PILGRIMAGES  49 

day — the  longer  they  can  sleep  in  the  day  the  better, 
poor  little  things.  Towards  evening  tempers  are  apt 
not  to  be  very  good,  but  everyone  enjoys  the  night. 

No  one  wants  to  work  in  Ramazan ;  they  do  not  want 
to  get  more  hungry  than  they  need ;  and,  of  course,  the 
schools  are  all  closed. 

The  dispensaries  and  hospitals  are  nearly  empty,  for 
the  taking  of  medicine,  or  the  use  of  drops  for  the  eyes 
or  ears,  would  be  a  breaking  of  the  fast,  and  there  was 
a  great  discussion  once  as  to  whether  having  a  tooth 
out  would  have  the  same  effect.  It  seems  curious  to 
have  to  tell  the  people  to  take  their  medicine  twice  a 
night  instead  of  twice  a  day. 

After  Ramazan  the  dispensaries  are  full  of  patients 
who  have  made  themselves  ill  by  fasting  all  day  and 
overeating  themselves  at  night. 

Besides  the  younger  children  there  are  a  good  many 
other  people  who  get  off  the  fast.  Opium-eaters  need 
not  fast ;  travellers  need  not  fast  on  a  journey  ;  sick 
people  can  get  a  dispensation  from  a  mulla.  A  great 
many  people  take  advantage  of  this,  and  make  a 
small  ailment  an  excuse  for  not  fasting,  but  they  are 
supposed  to  make  it  up  at  some  other  time  of  year. 

If  anyone  forgets  and  thoughtlessly  breaks  his  fast 
no  great  harm  is  done,  but  he  must  fast  an  extra  day 
in  the  year  to  make  up  for  it.  Some  people  "  forget  ” 
every  day,  but  such  people  do  not  usually  make  it  up 
at  any  other  time. 

Just  before  Ramazan  a  good  many  people  are  fast¬ 
ing,  having  put  off  to  the  last  minute  the  making-up 
of  the  fast  days  for  the  previous  Ramazan. 

D 


50 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


People  who  want  to  be  very  good  sometimes  fast  on 
Saints’  Days  too,  and  one  old  lady  always  fasted  on  the 
day  when  Muhammadan  tradition  says  that  our  Lord 
Jesus  Christ  was  born. 

Another  way  in  which  Muhammadans  think  they  can 
gain  merit  is  by  making  a  pilgrimage  to  some  holy  place. 

Pilgrimages  may  be  made  to  any  place  where  a 
Muhammadan  saint  is  buried,  but  there  are  four 
special  places  to  which  the  Persians  go — Qum,  Meshed, 
Kerbela,  and  Mecca.  Mecca  is  considered  far  the 
greatest  place  of  pilgrimage,  because  it  is  the  place 
where  Muhammad  was  born.  A  pilgrimage  to  Qum 
gives  the  pilgrim  no  commonly  used  title,  but  if  he  goes 
to  Meshed  he  becomes  Meshedi ;  if  to  Kerbela,  Kerbelai ; 
and,  if  to  Mecca,  Hdji ;  and  a  Hdji  always  uses  his  title. 
In  accosting  a  working-class  stranger  it  is  polite  to 
call  him  Meshedi ,  and  more  polite  to  call  him  Kerbelai, 
but  Hdji  is  too  important  a  title  to  be  used  in  this  way. 
Quite  little  boys  and  girls  are  sometimes  Hdjis — they 
have  been  taken  to  Mecca  by  their  parents. 

But  the  people  who  most  frequently  go  are  the 
business  men  and  the  old  people.  The  business  men 
manage  to  make  a  business  journey,  which  will  include 
Mecca,  and  the  old  people,  old  women  especially,  are 
often  sent  as  a  polite  way  of  getting  rid  of  them 
when  they  are  cranky  and  ill-tempered.  If  they  die 
on  the  way,  they  are  supposed  to  go  straight  to  Heaven. 
A  good  many  do  die  on  the  road,  which  is  a  very 
rough  one.  It  reminds  one  of  the  man  who  said  of  his 
enemies  that  he  should  like  to  convert  them  and  send 
them  to  Heaven  before  they  had  time  to  backslide. 


FASTING  AND  PILGRIMAGES 


51 


One  day  in  a  caravanserai ,  or  native  inn,  I  met  a 
young  woman  who  told  me  a  friend  who  was  going  on 
a  pilgrimage  had  passed  through  her  village  and  had 
persuaded  her  to  come  too.  She  was  going  to  walk 
all  the  way  and  trust  to  charity  for  food,  as  many 
pilgrims  do,  for  it  is  considered  a  greater  work  of 
merit  to  give  to  a  pilgrim  than  to  an  ordinary  beggar. 
The  journey  would  take  several  months. 

I  asked  her  a  few  questions. 

Yes,  she  said,  she  had  a  husband  and  children. 

“  And  are  they  with  you  ?  ” 

“No,  they  are  in  my  village/’ 

“  Are  the  children  grown-up  then  ?  ” 

“  Oh  no,  they  are  quite  little.” 

“  Then  who  is  going  to  take  care  of  them  while  you 
are  away  ?  ” 

“  I  do  not  know.  There  was  no  time  to  make  arrange¬ 
ments.  I  had  not  even  time  to  tell  my  husband  I  was 
going.  He  was  at  work.  My  friends  tell  me  it  will  be  a 
very  great  work  of  merit  if  I  go.  What  do  you  think  ?  ” 
We  had  a  long  talk,  and  I  believe  she  went  back  the 
same  evening  to  her  home.  If  so,  she  would  get  back 
within  twenty-four  hours  of  having  left  it. 

The  Muhammadans  themselves  generally  allow 
that  they  are  no  more  agreeable  or  kind  or  truthful 
or  good  after  their  pilgrimages — at  least  those  who 
do  not  go  say  so  freely.  They  even  have  a  proverb : 
"  If  your  friend  has  been  to  Mecca,  trust  him  not. 
If  he  has  been  there  twice,  avoid  him.  But  if  he  has 
made  the  pilgrimage  the  third  time,  flee  from  him  as 
you  would  from  Satan.” 


52 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


Even  dead  people  make  pilgrimages,  generally  to 
Qum,  or,  if  they  are  very  important  people,  to  Kerbela. 
I  have  not  been  to  Kerbela,  but  I  have  been  to  Qum, 
and  we  met  quite  a  number  of  corpses  going  to  the 
burying-ground  outside  the  big  mosque.  Sometimes 
the  relations  bring  them,  but  often  they  cannot 
afford  the  journey  and  pay  a  muleteer  to  take  them, 
and  to  pay  the  fees,  which  are  very  large.  Sometimes 
the  muleteers  bury  the  bodies  elsewhere  and  pocket  the 
fees. 

Qum  itself  is  considered  such  a  holy  city  that  they 
do  not  allow  dogs  inside  it. 


CHAPTER  IX  f. 

SAVABS 

Their  is  a  little  Persian  book,  which  many  of  the  little 
boys  learn  to  read,  called  “  Sad  Hikayat  ”  or  “A 
Hundred  Stories/’  Some  of  the  stories  are  very  like 
/Esop’s  Fables,  and  they  are  all  supposed  to  teach  the 
children  something.  One  story  tells  them  that  at  the 
end  of  the  world  God  will  take  a  great  pair  of  scales, 
and  as  each  person  comes  up  for  judgment  God  will  put 
his  good  deeds  in  one  scale  and  his  evil  deeds  in  the 
other.  If  the  good  deeds  weigh  heaviest  he  will  go 
to  Heaven,  if  his  evil  deeds  weigh  the  balance  down  he 
will  go  to  Hell. 

These  good  deeds  are  called  savdbs,  and  every  Persian, 
whether  child  or  grown-up,  hopes  to  get  to  Heaven  by 
doing  enough  savdbs  to  outweigh  his  sins. 


SAVABS 


53 


So  a  little  Persian  boy  or  girl  is  not  taught  to  try  to 
always  do  right  or  to  always  try  to  please  and  serve 
God,  but  only  to  do  enough  right  to  outweigh  the 
wrong  he  does,  and  if  he  feels  he  has  done  wrong 
instead  of  confessing  his  sin  to  God  and  asking  His 
forgiveness  he  simply  tries  to  balance  it  by  a  good  deed. 

And  what  a  Persian  boy  or  girl  is  taught  of  what 
is  right  and  wrong  is  very  different  from  all  you  have 
learnt.  First  there  is  a  definite  list  of  sins,  which  they 
can  learn  by  heart,  and  nothing  outside  of  this  list  is 
considered  a  "  sin/'  though  other  things  which  are  not 
right  may  be  called  “  errors/’  which  is  a  much  less 
strong  word. 

As  to  good  deeds  there  is  more  difference  of  opinion. 
One  of  the  “  Hundred  Stories  ”  deals  with  this  point. 

A  man  was  travelling  in  the  desert  and  came  to  a 
well.  He  dismounted,  drove  a  stable-pin  into  the 
ground,  and  tied  his  horse  to  it  while  he  ate  his  meal. 
When  he  resumed  his  journey  he  left  the  pin  in  the 
ground  that  other  travellers  coming  there  might  tie 
their  horses  to  it.  Presently  a  man  on  foot  came 
along,  and,  not  seeing  the  pin,  knocked  his  foot  against 
it  and  hurt  himself.  He  pulled  up  the  pin  and  threw 
it  into  the  well  lest  any  one  else  should  hurt  himself  in 
the  same  way.  A  discussion  arose  as  to  which  of  the 
two  had  done  a  savdb,  the  man  who  drove  the  nail 
in  or  the  man  who  took  it  out,  and  finally  a  learned 
and  holy  man  was  consulted.  After  much  thought 
he  gave  it  as  his  opinion  that  both  had  done  savdbs. 

Every  little  act  of  kindness  is  a  savdb ,  and  this  en¬ 
courages  good  nature  and  kindliness. 


54 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


The  children  are  taught  to  look  out  for  chances  of 
doing  a  kind  action  and  so  balancing  their  wrong-doing. 
But  at  the  same  time  they  are  taught  to  think  that  if 
they  do  a  certain  number  of  kind  deeds  it  will  not 
matter  if  they  do  wrong  at  other  times.  Little 
Rajab  ‘Ali,  the  muleteer’s  boy,  would  run  to  fasten  up 
the  trailing  head-rope  of  another  man’s  mule,  he  would 
lend  a  helping  hand  to  some  stranger  whose  donkey 
had  fallen  under  its  load,  and  between  whiles  he  would 
treat  his  own  mules  and  donkeys  most  cruelly.  He 
thought  his  cruelty  did  not  matter,  because  he  had  been 
kind  as  well. 

A  dishonest  lad  will  try  to  wipe  out  his  dishonesty 
by  being  regular  with  his  prayers  or  by  an  extra  day’s 
fast.  A  man  who  has  cheated  someone  of  ten  krans 
will  give  a  krdn  to  a  beggar  and  consider  his  account 
settled.  One  man  tried  to  atone  for  the  most  out¬ 
rageous  extortion  and  injustice  by  spending  part  of  his 
ill-earned  gains  on  good  roads  for  the  villagers  and  a 
free  school,  while  all  the  time  he  made  no  pretence  of 
giving  up  his  evil  ways.  Those  he  had  injured  com¬ 
plained  that  now  he  would  escape  the  punishment  of 
God. 

The  Persians  seem  unable  to  realise  the  possibility 
of  any  other  motive  for  good  works.  When  the 
missionaries  first  went  to  Yezd  and  opened  a  medical 
mission,  the  people  said,  “  What  terribly  wicked  people 
they  must  be  to  have  to  do  so  much  good.” 

One  curious  result  of  this  idea  of  winning  Heaven 
and  securing  better  places  there  by  good  works  is 
that  it  almost  destroys  gratitude.  The  beggar  feels 


SAVABS 


55 


that  he  has  helped  you  one  step  up  in  Heaven  by 
accepting  your  alms  ;  then  surely  he  has  done  you 
more  good  than  you  have  done  him,  and  why  should 
he  be  grateful  to  you  ? 

The  patients  who  are  treated  free  at  the  dispensary 
have  the  same  feeling ;  the  doctor  improved  their  bodily 
state,  but  they  have  improved  his  spiritual  position. 

It  is  considered  a  special  work  of  merit  to  do  any¬ 
thing  for  a  Seyid,  that  is,  a  descendant  of  Muhammad, 
so  everyone  tries  to  be  kind  to  Seyids,  and  they  are  so 
spoilt  and  are  made  so  much  of  that  they  are  generally 
unbearably  selfish,  and  think  themselves  the  most 
important  people  in  the  world. 

Often  in  the  dispensary  the  doctor  is  exhorted  to  do 
his  utmost  or  to  break  through  some  rule  because  the 
patient  is  a  Seyid,  and  they  are  incredulous  and  rather 
shocked  when  they  are  told  that  an  ordinary  patient’s 
pain  is  just  as  great  as  a  Seyid’ s,  and  that  all  must  be 
taken  in  their  turn. 

Another  result  of  this  doctrine  of  works  of  merit, 
or  savabs,  as  they  call  them,  is  that  even  when  a 
Muhammadan  seems  straight  and  honest  and  alto¬ 
gether  a  good  fellow  you  cannot  entirely  trust  him, 
because  he  has  so  many  good  works  to  his  credit  that 
he  feels  a  few  sins  do  not  matter,  they  are  more  than 
paid  for  beforehand. 

A  Persian’s  idea  of  what  is  a  savab  is  sometimes 
curious.  Prayers,  fasting,  pilgrimages,  and  the  reading 
of  the  Quran  are,  of  course,  all  considered  works  of  merit. 

Marrying  your  father’s  brother’s  daughter  is  a 
savab ,  though  there  is  no  particular  merit  in  marrying 


56 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


your  father’s  sister’s  daughter  or  your  mother's 
brother’s  daughter. 

Some  Persian  women  inquired  one  day  what  each 
of  three  missionaries  living  together  ate  for  breakfast, 
and  hearing  that  two  had  eggs,  while  the  third  had  not, 
they  nodded  at  each  other,  as  much  as  to  say,  “  I  told 
you  so,”  and  remarked,  “  It  is  a  savdb.  She  wants  to 
get  a  higher  place  in  Heaven.” 

Giving  money  to  beggars  is  always  considered  a 
savdb,  but  it  is  considered  a  greater  savdb  on  Thursday 
than  on  any  other  day.  Friday  is  the  Muhammadan 
holy  day,  and  they  call  Thursday  “  the  Eve  of  Friday,” 
and  on  Thursday  the  beggars  all  call  out  as  you  pass, 
"  It  is  the  Eve  of  Friday  ;  give  me  a  copper.” 

The  grown-up  beggars  generally,  but  not  always, 
sit  by  the  roadside  begging,  but  the  children  run 
alongside  of  you  and  are  often  very  persistent.  There 
are  nearly  always  beggars  at  the  gate  of  any  town, 
asking  those  who  are  starting  on  a  journey  to  give 
them  an  alms,  and  so  secure  safety  on  their  journey. 
If  Jericho  was  anything  like  a  Persian  town  it  was 
most  natural  that  our  Lord  should  find  one  blind 
beggar  as  He  went  into  the  town  (St  Luke  18,  v.  35), 
and  one  or  two  more  as  He  came  out  by  another  gate 
(St  Matt.  20,  v.  30),  and  that  they  should  address  Him 
in  almost  exactly  the  same  language. 

Begging  is  often  a  very  paying  occupation,  for  so 
many  people  feel  that  they  have  sins  to  make  up  for, 
that  the  cry,  "  Give  me  a  copper.  It  will  be  a  savdb,” 
is  a  difficult  one  to  refuse,  especially  if  the  copper  is 
only  worth  a  farthing. 


SAVABS 


57 


So  well  does  begging  pay  that  on  more  than  one 
occasion  the  mothers  and  wives  of  well-to-do  trades¬ 
men  have  been  detected  in  old  chddars  begging  in  the 
streets  and  at  houses.  The  difficulty  of  recognising  a 
woman  who  is  completely  covered  up  with  a  black 
chadar  makes  disguise  easy. 

During  the  massacre  of  the  Babis,  a  dissenting  sect 
of  Muhammadans,  in  1903,  it  was  considered  a  savdb 
to  kill  a  Babi,  but  some  of  the  kindlier  people  thought 
it  also  a  savdb  to  save  a  life,  even  if  it  was  a  Babi’s, 
One  man  is  said  to  have  been  seen  with  a  prisoner,  in 
great  perplexity,  saying,  “  I  am  quite  sure  of  Hell  for 
my  sins,  unless  I  can  do  a  big  savdb ;  if  this  man  is  a 
Babi,  my  chance  of  salvation  is  to  kill  him,  but  I  am 
not  sure  whether  he  is,  and  if  I  kill  a  true  believer  I  shall 
be  worse  off  than  ever.” 

But  there  are  savdbs  of  a  very  different  sort. 

There  was  an  old  woman  friendless  and  ill,  and  a 
Persian  man  found  her  in  the  street,  too  ill  to  get  home 
to  the  one  wretched  room  where  she  lived  all  alone. 
He  did  not  know  her,  but  he  decided  to  undertake  the 
savdb.  He  sent  across  the  town  for  a  medical  mission¬ 
ary,  knowing  the  Christians  had  the  reputation  of 
never  refusing  to  help  the  sick  poor.  He  stayed  there 
till  the  doctor  arrived,  and  said  that  if  she  would  visit 
the  old  woman  and  provide  the  medicines  he  would  send 
for  them,  and  would  provide  the  food  and  nursing,  and 
this  he  did  until  the  old  woman  died  a  few  days  later. 

The  adoption  of  a  destitute  child  is  not  an  uncommon 
savdb,  and  these  children  are  often  treated  very  well 
and  given  a  good  start  in  life. 


58 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


A  kind  action,  as  we  have  seen,  is  always  considered 
a  savab ,  whether  it  is  helping  a  fallen  mule  to  get  up, 
giving  a  copper  to  a  beggar,  or  tending  a  friendless 
stranger  in  sickness  and  death.  We  may  almost  say 
that  this  is  the  one  redeeming  point  of  a  Persian's 
religion.  Generally  speaking,  Persians  are  not  im¬ 
proved  by  their  religious  ideas,  for  the  stronger  their 
religious  ideas  are  the  worse  their  lives  are,  and  what 
one  most  admires  in  Persian  character  is  least  in 
accordance  with  their  religious  beliefs. 


CHAPTER  X 

MUHAMMADAN  CHARMS  AND  SUPERSTITIONS 

Muhammad  did  not  write  down  his  teaching,  for  he 
could  not  write,  but  his  followers  learnt  it  by  heart, 
and  wrote  it  down,  and  after  his  death  it  was  collected 
into  one  book  called  the  Quran.  It  was  arranged 
in  a  haphazard  way,  and  probably  the  early  chapters 
were  really  spoken  last,  and  the  later  ones  first.  How¬ 
ever,  the  Muhammadans  believe  it  to  be,  as  it  now 
stands,  the  Word  of  God,  and  they  treat  it  with  great 
respect.  When  they  pick  the  book  up  or  lay  it  down 
they  put  it  first  to  the  forehead  and  then  to  the  lips, 
and  they  hold  it  in  both  hands.  Many  Christians  might 
learn  from  them  to  treat  God’s  Word  more  reverently. 
They  consider  it  a  work  of  merit  to  read  the  Quran 
or  listen  to  it,  and  they  read  it  over  their  sick  folk  in 
hopes  of  curing  them.  But  perhaps  the  commonest 
and  most  popular  edition  is  a  two-inch  hexagonal  one 


READING  THE  QURAN  TO  THE  SICK 


I 


MUHAMMADAN  SUPERSTITIONS  59 


which  is  almost  illegible.  This  is  sewn  up  in  two  little 
round  or  hexagonal  cases,  each  containing  half,  and 
is  worn  on  the  arms  to  keep  off  evil  of  every  kind. 
The  cases  may  be  plain  leather  or  cloth,  or  they  may 
be  more  elaborate  and  ornamental,  or  silver  cases  may 
be  used  with  texts  from  the  Quran  engraved  upon  them. 

Smaller  and  cheaper  charms  are  made  of  texts  from 
the  Quran  enclosed  in  the  same  way. 

These  charms,  and  also  beads  made  from  the  blue 
clay  of  the  holy  city  of  Qum,  are  used  for  animals 
as  well  as  people,  especially  young  mules.  I  once 
had  a  charm  given  me  for  a  kitten. 

Children  often  wear  a  very  large  number  of  charms 
sewn  on  to  the  cap  or  hung  on  a  chain  round  the  neck, 
as  they  are  supposed  to  be  much  more  susceptible 
than  grown-up  people  to  evil  influences.  One  quaint  - 
looking  charm  is  a  little  cloth  camel,  Abraham’s 
camel,  sewn  on  the  cap. 

What  the  Persians  fear  more  than  anything  for  their 
children  is  the  evil  eye,  and  it  is  especially  to  protect 
them  from  this  that  they  cover  them  with  charms. 
They  say  there  are  certain  people  who  have  an  “  evil 
eye.”  No  one  seems  to  know  many  such  people,  but 
most  people  say  they  know  at  least  one.  These 
people  injure  everything  that  pleases  them,  and  that 
they  admire.  If  they  admire  a  baby  it  will  get  ill  and 
very  likely  die  ;  if  they  admire  a  mule  it  will  probably 
go  lame  ;  if  they  admire  a  tree  it  will  wither  ;  if  they 
admire  a  cup  it  will  break.  There  does  not  seem  to 
be  necessarily  any  wish  to  do  harm,  the  mere  taking 
pleasure  in  the  thing  causes  the  disaster. 


60 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


Persons  with  the  evil  eye  are  quite  impossible  to 
distinguish,  so  the  Persians  are  afraid  of  all  strangers 
lest  they  should  have  it.  This  is  why  you  must 
not  admire  a  baby,  and  Persian  mothers  cover  up 
their  young  babies  completely  in  the  street  for  fear  a 
casual  passer-by  should  admire  them  and  should 
prove  to  have  the  evil  eye. 

The  men  carry  iron  in  their  pockets  as  a  protection, 
and  a  magnet  is  considered  specially  powerful  in  this 
way.  A  more  common  form  of  iron  to  carry  is  an 
iron  chain,  which  is  useful  for  driving  mules  and 
donkeys  and  beating  off  savage  dogs. 

The  women  sometimes  wear  charms  to  make  their 
husbands  love  them.  One  poor  thing  gave  me  hers — 
two  large  beads  :  they  had  not  proved  of  much  use,  for 
her  husband  beat  her  and  treated  her  very  badly. 

Another  charm  is  a  tiny  bag  of  the  scented  earth  of 
Kerbela,  where  Muhammad’s  grandson  Husain  was 
killed,  and  if  rubbed  on  the  eyelids  it  is  said  to  cause 
the  eyes  to  shine  brightly. 

The  beads  of  the  Muhammadan  rosaries  are  often 
made  of  this  Kerbela  earth.  Every  Muhammadan  has 
his  rosary — many  of  them  have  quite  a  collection,  for 
pilgrims  to  Kerbela  bring  back  rosaries  for  all  their 
friends. 

These  rosaries  are  never  used  for  counting  prayers, 
but  occasionally  for  counting  the  attributes  of  God  or 
invocations.  But  the  main  use  is  a  very  different 
one.  They  are  the  Persian’s  ordinary  means  of  trying 
to  find  out  God’s  will.  They  are  used  both  in  serious 
and  in  frivolous  matters ;  no  Persian  will  settle  any¬ 
thing  without  “  taking  the  beads.”  He  takes  the  beads 


MUHAMMADAN  SUPERSTITIONS  61 


before  making  a  business  appointment,  but  he  takes 
them  again  to  see  whether  he  shall  keep  it  or  not. 
He  takes  the  beads  to  see  what  doctor  he  is  to  send  for, 
and  again  to  see  if  he  shall  follow  his  instructions.  He 
takes  the  beads  to  see  if  it  is  a  good  day  to  buy  a  new 
coat,  and  again  to  see  if  it  is  a  good  day  to  put  it  on. 
You  often  see  a  pious  Muhammadan  fingering  the  beads 
under  her  chadar  before  she  answers  your  questions. 

The  rosaries  are  made  of  a  large  number  of  small 
beads  all  alike,  and  three  only,  which  are  different  and 
are  called  “  Sheikhs  placed  in  different  parts  of  the 
string.  To  take  the  beads  a  Muhammadan  turns  to¬ 
wards  Mecca  and  says  an  Arabic  collect.  Then  he 
divides  the  beads  without  looking,  and  tells  them 
off  two  by  two,  saying  over  and  over,  as  he  does  so, 
“  Subhdnu' lldh  "  (God  is  glorious)  “  Alhamdu'li' lldh" 
(Praise  be  to  God),  “  Va'lldh  ”  (and  He  is  the  God), 
passing  two  beads  for  each  word  until  he  comes  to  a 
Sheikh,  when  he  stops.  If  there  are  two  beads  for  the  last 
word,  the  answer  is  much  more  emphatic  than  if  there  is 
only  an  odd  one.  If  the  last  word  is  “  Subhdnu' lldh  " 
the  answer  is  favourable,  “ Alhamdu  'll  lldh  "  is  doubtful 
and  <(  Va'lldh  "  is  unfavourable.  If  the  answer  is  doubt¬ 
ful  a  Persian  generally  follows  his  own  inclinations. 

If  the  answer  is  not  what  the  questioner  likes,  the 
beads  may  be  taken  again  in  the  mosque,  and  the 
answer  in  the  mosque  take  precedence  of  that  in  the 
house.  If,  however,  the  answer  is  still  the  same,  there 
is  a  third  method.  For  a  small  fee  a  mulla  will  do  the 
same  sort  of  thing  with  the  Quran,  and  the  text 
selected  overrules  the  two  previous  answers. 

A  Persian  lady  sent  for  an  English  missionary  to 


62 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


extract  an  aching  tooth.  The  missionary  found  her  in 
great  pain,  but  she  said  she  could  not  have  the  tooth 
out  as  the  beads  were  against  it,  but  she  had  sent  to  the 
mosque  and  was  hoping  for  a  favourable  answer  from 
there.  However,  all  methods  gave  an  unfavourable 
answer,  so  she  put  off  the  extraction  to  another  day. 

“  It  would  be  much  better  for  me  to  have  it  out,” 
she  said,  “  but  it  is  not  God's  Will.” 

The  Wise  Men  from  the  East  looked  for  God's 
guidance  among  the  stars,  and  there  God  sent  them  a 
message.  And  here  and  there  where  a  Muhammadan 
earnestly  seeks  God's  guidance,  because  he  is  trying  to 
really  live  as  God's  servant,  who  shall  say  that  he  does 
not  receive  it  where  he  has  been  taught  to  look  for  it. 

But  taken  as  a  system,  how  trivial,  how  childish, 
how  irreverent  it  all  is.  They  use  God's  name,  but 
they  take  His  name  in  vain.  They  profess  to  seek 
God’s  will,  and  profess  to  receive  an  answer  from  Him, 
and  often  try  the  next  moment  to  set  it  aside  and  force 
or  coax  an  opposite  answer  out  of  Him. 

The  Muhammadans  think  that  through  their  beads 
they  can  use  God  for  settling  the  every-day  matters  of 
this  world  in  a  lucky  way,  while  they  are  disobeying 
Him  in  the  greater  matter  of  godly  living. 


CHAPTER  XI 

PERSIAN  SCHOOLS 

A  great  many  things  are  topsy-turvy  in  Persia,  but 
perhaps  reading  is  as  topsy-turvy  as  anything.  It 


PERSIAN  SCHOOLS 


63 


is  not  only  that  the  lines,  and  indeed  the  whole  book, 
begin  at  the  wrong  end,  but  the  lessons  begin  at  the 
wrong  end  too. 

An  English  boy  leams  to  read  his  own  language 
first,  and  does  not  always  go  on  to  a  foreign  language. 
A  Persian  boy  learns  to  read  a  foreign  language  first, 
and  does  not  always  go  on  to  his  own  language. 

When  a  little  Persian  boy  goes  to  school  he  is  given 
a  big  Arabic  book,  with  a  great  many  long  words  in  it, 
and  he  is  not  taught  how  the  words  are  spelt,  but  is 
told  what  they  are,  and  made  to  repeat  them  from 
memory,  pointing  to  each  word  in  the  book  as  he  says 
it,  and  gradually  he  gets  some  idea  of  which  word  is 
which. 

The  boys  sit  on  the  floor  round  the  room,  all  reading 
at  the  top  of  their  voices  at  the  same  time  in  different 
parts  of  the  book.  They  read  in  a  monotonous  sing¬ 
song  voice,  swaying  their  bodies  in  time  to  the  sound. 

The  master  sits  and  listens  through  the  din  to  one 
and  another  correcting  mistakes  here  and  there,  and 
calling  up  any  boy  who  seems  perfect  in  his  lesson  to 
learn  the  next  bit,  and  then  return  to  his  seat  and  read 
it  over  and  over  till  he  knows  it  too. 

The  book  is  the  Quran,  which  the  Muhammadans 
think  was  dictated  by  God  to  Muhammad  through  the 
Archangel  Gabriel.  It  would  not  be  surprising  if  the 
Persians,  being  Muhammadans,  wished  all  their  boys 
to  learn  what  they  believe  to  be  God’s  Word  ;  but  the 
book  is  written  in  Arabic,  which  Persian  boys  do  not 
understand,  and  even  the  letters  are  not  quite  the  same 
as  in  Persian  ;  so  when  the  little  pupil  reaches  the  end 


64 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


of  the  book  he  can  read  the  Quran  with  the  proper 
intonation,  but  he  can  read  nothing  else,  and  he  cannot 
understand  the  Quran. 

The  Muhammadans,  however,  think  that  reading  the 
Quran,  quite  apart  from  understanding  it,  is  a  very 
good  action,  so  the  little  Persian  boys  work  away  at 
it,  and  they  do  not  think  it  hard  lines  because  they 
know  all  the  men,  and  big  boys  began  in  the  same  way, 
so  it  seems  the  natural  thing  to  do.  And  perhaps  it  is 
a  little  consolation  to  know  that  when  they  reach 
certain  points  they  will  be  given  sweets.  One  little 
boy,  who  was  asked  how  far  he  had  got  in  the  Quran, 
said  that  he  had  just  got  to  his  first  sweets. 

Having  finished  the  Quran  our  little  Persian  boy 
goes  on  to  Persian  books.  These,  too,  he  studies 
in  much  the  same  way  as  he  did  the  Quran,  but  it 
is  more  useful,  because  now  he  understands  what  he 
reads.  After  plodding  through  the  Quran  it  is  a 
pleasant  change  for  little  Ghulam  Husain  to  turn 
to  the  War  between  the  Cats  and  Mice,  the  Hundred 
Fables,  or  Stories  of  Husain  and  Hasan  (Muhammad’s 
two  grandsons).  Later  on  he  reads  the  poems  of  Hafiz 
and  Sa’adi,  and  other  great  Persian  poets,  for  there  is 
a  great  deal  of  beautiful  poetry  in  Persian. 

There  is  no  convenient  desk  or  table  for  Ghulam 
Husain  to  write  on.  He  sits  on  the  floor  and  holds  the 
paper  in  his  hand  or  on  his  knee.  His  pen  is  a  bit  of 
fine  cane,  cut  like  a  quill,  but  with  a  slanting  end.  As 
he  holds  it  the  handle  points  directly  to  the  right  and 
it  is  the  horizontal  lines  which  he  must  make  broad, 
while  the  up  and  down  strokes  must  both  be  fine. 


A  PERSIAN  SCHOOL 


PERSIAN  SCHOOLS 


65 


Ghulam  Husain  never  spills  his  ink.  Each  boy  has 
his  own  inkpot,  which  contains  a  tangled  piece  of  silk 
soaked  in  ink.  It  dries  up  between  the  lessons,  so 
when  Ghulam  Husain  wants  to  write  he  moistens  it 
with  water  so  that  the  silk  is  thoroughly  wet,  but  there 
is  no  water  lying  in  the  inkpot.  In  among  this  wet 
silk  he  dips  his  pen. 

If  you  look  into  Ghulam  Husain’s  pen-box  you  will 
find  pens  cut  to  various  breadths  for  large  or  small 
writing,  a  penknife,  and  a  little  slab  to  rest  the  pen- 
point  on  for  the  final  cut ;  an  inkpot,  and  a  tiny  brass 
ladle  for  adding  water. 

Many  an  English  boy  finds  it  tiresome  to  have  to 
dot  his  is,  but  little  Ghulam  Husain  has  to  dot  almost 
every  letter,  some  above  the  line  and  some  below, 
some  with  one  dot,  some  with  two,  and  some  with 
three.  These  dots  are  not  round,  but  square,  and  the 
height  of  the  letters  is  measured  by  the  size  of  the 
dots.  This  letter  must  be  one  dot  high,  that  letter 
two  dots  high,  another  three,  and  yet  another  five 
dots  high.  The  size  of  the  dot  itself  depends  on  the 
breadth  of  the  pen. 

As  he  learns  to  write  better  he  will  run  his  letters 
into  curious  combinations,  and  group  his  dots 
picturesquely  in  parts  of  the  word  to  which  they  do 
not  belong,  or  leave  them  out  altogether,  until  at 
last,  when  he  can  write  a  really  beautiful  hand, 
the  schoolmaster  himself  will  not  be  able  to  read 
the  letter  without  careful  study,  and  may  even  have 
to  guess  at  the  meaning  of  particularly  well- written 
passages. 

One  great  beauty  of  a  Persian  letter  is  the  way  each 

E 


66 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


line  runs  up  at  the  end,  making  a  pile  of  words,  syllables, 
and  even  single  letters,  something  in  this  style  : — 


rew 
s  sc 
Persian 
way  the 

"  My  dear  Children, — This  is  the 

ers. 

lett 
write 
en  they 

up  the  ends  of  their  lines  wh 

f 

k  o 
thin 
ey  can 
words  th 

They  also  use  all  the  longest 

eir 
at  th 
so  th 
arly  all 
els  or  ne 

and  leave  out  all  their  vow 

ops.” 
no  st 
they  use 
ecially  as 
read,  esp 

letters  are  very  hard  to 

The  Persians  do  not  apparently  think  much  of 
their  own  system  of  education,  for  they  are  always 
laughing  at  their  schoolmasters. 

They  have  a  story  of  a  charvaddr ,  or  muleteer,  one 
of  whose  mules  strayed  one  day  into  a  school.  It  was 
quickly  driven  out,  and  the  muleteer  claimed  damages 


PERSIAN  SCHOOLS 


67 


from  the  schoolmaster  to  the  extent  of  half  the  value 
of  the  mule.  The  schoolmaster  indignantly  asked  on 
what  he  based  his  claim.  The  muleteer  turned  to  the 
crowd  which  had  gathered  to  listen  to  the  argument. 
“  My  beast,”  said  he,  “  went  into  his  school  a  mule 
and  it  has  come  out  a  donkey.”  You  see  a  donkey 
counts  half  a  mule  in  caravan  travelling,  just  as  a  child 
counts  half  a  person  in  train  travelling. 

The  punishments  are  as  topsy-turvy  as  the  lessons. 
When  a  boy  is  caned  he  lies  on  his  back  and  holds  out 
his  feet  instead  of  his  hands.  Sometimes  his  feet  are 
held  in  a  kind  of  stocks  while  he  is  caned  across  the 
soles.  They  call  it  “  eating  sticks  ”  or  “  eating  wood  ” 
— the  words  are  the  same. 

Some  missionaries  were  picnicking  one  day  in  an 
orchard  in  a  hill  village,  and  the  village  children 
gathered  round  to  watch  the  foreigners’  strange  ways. 
“Do  you  often  come  and  eat  plums  here  ?  ”  one  of  the 
ladies  asked ;  and  she  was  greatly  bewildered  by  the 
curious  tastes  of  Persian  boys,  when  the  owner  of  the 
orchard  answered  for  them,  that  the  boys  who  came 
into  his  orchard  ate  not  the  plums  but  the  wood. 

This  beating  on  the  soles  of  the  feet  is  a  common 
punishment  for  every  one,  from  the  slave  and  the  school¬ 
boy  to  the  criminal  and  the  political  offender.  With 
schoolboys  it  is  of  course  not  very  severe,  but  in  more 
serious  cases  it  may  be  very  severe  indeed,  even  re¬ 
sulting  in  death.  The  culprit  in  these  cases  is  ordered 
not  so  many  blows  but  so  many  sticks,  i.e.  he  is  to  be 
beaten  till  so  many  sticks  have  been  broken.  A 
hundred  sticks  is  not  an  uncommon  punishment.  If 
the  culprit  is  rich  enough  he  may  bribe  the  farrashes  to 


68 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


strike  the  stocks  when  possible  and  so  break  the 
sticks  quickly,  and  not  over  his  feet  ;  but  a  poor  man 
has  to  take  his  punishment. 

There  is  no  compulsory  education  in  Persia  and  very 
little  free  education.  There  was  one  man  who  tried 
to  atone  for  sins,  which  he  made  no  pretence  of  giving 
up,  by  founding  a  large  free  school  in  one  Persian 
town,  but  it  is  not  a  common  form  of  benevolence. 
So  it  is  only  those  who  can  spare  a  little  money  who 
send  their  boys  to  school,  and  a  great  many  never  get 
beyond  a  very  early  stage  of  reading  and  writing. 

As  for  the  girls  very  few  parents  care  to  waste  their 
money  over  their  girls’  education  A  certain  number 
are  taught  to  read  the  Quran,  a  less  number  go  on 
to  reading  such  books  as  they  have  studied,  but  very 
few  can  read  at  sight,  and  writing  is  even  rarer.  Still 
in  the  matter  of  the  education  of  girls  Persia  is  in 
advance  of  other  Muhammadan  countries. 

In  these  days  of  general  education  it  is  difficult 
for  us  to  realise  in  this  country  how  hard  it  is  for  the 
missionaries  to  teach  the  gospel  truths  to  the  Persians. 
There  is  so  much  to  be  taught  and  there  are  so  many 
to  be  taught,  and  when  it  has  to  be  done  orally  to 
people  whose  intelligence  and  memory  have  never  been 
developed  by  study  of  any  kind,  whose  minds  and 
brains  have  never  grown  up  properly,  and  who  forget 
so  easily,  it  means  an  amount  of  work  that  wrould 
take  up  all  the  time  and  strength  of  far  more  mission¬ 
aries  than  are  now  in  the  field. 

Many  of  the  converts  cannot  come  regularly  for 

oral  teaching,  and  they  are  liable  at  any  time  to  move 

out  of  the  missionaries’  reach,  so  the  missionaries  trv 

%/ 


CHRISTIAN  SCHOOLS 


69 


to  teach  all  the  converts  and  their  children  to  read  their 
Bibles  at  any  rate,  so  that  they  can  get  teaching  direct 
from  God’s  Word  themselves. 

Besides  the  Persian  schools  there  are  now  several 
Christian  schools  in  Persia,  but  we  will  talk  about 
those  in  the  next  chapter.  Since  they  were  started 
there  has  been  an  attempt  in  some  of  the  big  towns 
to  introduce  an  improved  system  of  teaching,  and 
Persian  reading-books  are  now  printed  with  ba-bi-bu, 
pa-pi-pu,  etc.  etc. ;  but  this  is  the  exceptional  method 
of  teaching,  and  not  the  rule  in  Persia,  and  I  doubt 
if  any  orthodox  schoolmaster  would  care  to  teach 
Persian  before  he  taught  the  Arabic  Quran. 

The  Parsees  have  a  very  good  school  in  Yezd,  largely 
supported  by  the  Parsees  in  Bombay,  but  this  is  only 
for  Parsee  boys. 


CHAPTER  XII 

CHRISTIAN  SCHOOLS 

There  are  two  branches  of  mission- work  in  Persia 
that  bring  the  missionaries  into  close  touch  with 
Persian  children  :  one  is  the  hospital,  the  other  is  the 
school.  You  will  hear  about  the  medical  work 
presently  ;  in  this  chapter  we  will  look  at  the  school 
work. 

There  are  Europeans  in  Persia,  wanting  English- 
speaking  servants  and  employes ;  there  are  rich 
Persians  wanting  secretaries  who  can  write  French  and 
English ;  there  are  business  firms  trading  with  England 
and  India  who  want  English-speaking  clerks  and 


70 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


correspondents ;  so  naturally  many  Persians  want 
their  sons  to  learn  English  ;  and  who  should  teach  it 
better  than  the  Englishman  ? 

But  this  is  not  all  they  want.  As  they  get  to  know 
the  Christians  they  see  that  there  is  something  in 
English  ways  and  English  character  that  the  Persian 
lacks.  And  they  bring  their  boys  to  the  missionary, 
and  ask  him  not  merely  to  teach  them  English,  not 
merely  to  teach  them  book-learning  of  any  sort,  but 
to  teach  them  to  be  good  boys. 

They  do  not  so  often  ask  for  a  girls’  school,  for  they 
do  not  think  a  girl  needs  any  book  education  as  a 
rule,  and  only  a  few  of  the  Persian  women  can  even 
read.  Yet  in  some  of  the  Mission-stations  girls’ 
schools  have  been  started  with  great  success,  and  year 
by  year  the  demand  for  them  is  growing. 

English  is  less  taught  in  these  schools,  but  some  of  the 
girls  learn  it,  especially  those  most  closely  connected 
with  the  mission.  The  girls,  of  course,  have  to  give 
a  good  deal  of  time  to  sewing  and  embroidery,  which 
are  more  necessary  for  them  than  foreign  languages. 

But  in  all  the  Mission-stations  sooner  or  later, 
generally  sooner,  a  boys’  school  is  started,  and  these 
schools  vary  very  much  according  to  the  needs  of  the 
different  towns. 

In  one  school  Armenians  and  Muhammadans  work 
side  by  side,  in  another  we  find  Muhammadans  and 
Parsees,  while  a  third  contains  all  three. 

In  one  school  only  English  is  taught,  in  another 
advanced  Persian  and  Arabic  are  added.  In  yet 
another,  everything  is  taught  from  the  Persian  alphabet 
onwards. 


CHRISTIAN  SCHOOLS 


71 


One  missionary  works  alone  in  his  own  house, 
another  has  a  full  staff  of  Armenian  and  Persian 
teachers  and  monitors,  and  a  well-built  convenient 
school. 

But  whatever  the  race  of  the  boys,  whatever  the 
subjects  taught,  whatever  the  organisation,  there  are 
difficulties  to  be  faced. 

It  is  difficult  to  get  teachers ;  sometimes  none 
can  be  got  on  the  spot,  and  they  have  to  be  fetched 
from  some  other  town,  perhaps  several  weeks’  journey 
away.  Sometimes  the  missionary  has  to  be  the  only 
teacher  till  he  can  train  some  of  his  own  boys  to  be 
first  monitors  and  then  masters  in  the  school. 

Then  there  is  the  school  itself.  Sometimes  the 
small  beginnings  of  a  school  are  started  in  the 
missionary’s  own  dining-room ;  sometimes  he  is  able 
to  spare  a  room  entirely  for  school  purposes.  In  one 
case  this  was  supplemented  by  a  rough  tent  or  shed 
made  of  matting  in  the  compound.  But  as  the  school 
grows,  separate  buildings  have  to  be  found  or 
built. 

Books  are  another  difficulty.  All  books  for  teaching 
English  have  to  be  got  from  abroad,  and  many  are  not 
suitable.  Readers  which  are  very  suitable  for  the 
size  of  boy  who  reads  them  in  England  or  India,  are 
not  suitable  for  the  young  men  who  often  use  them 
in  Persia.  If  you  give  an  educated  young  man,  well 
read  in  the  finest  Persian  poetry,  the  childish  stories 
and  rhymes  in  many  of  the  readers,  he  thinks  English 
books  are  very,  very  foolish,  and  his  opinion  of  English 
intelligence  in  both  literary  and  religious  matters  falls 
very  low. 


72 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


All  these  things  need  money.  The  boys  generally 
pay  a  very  small  fee  and  buy  their  own  books,  but  the 
fees  do  not  go  far  towards  paying  for  the  schools 
and  the  teachers'  salaries,  and  the  getting  together  of 
the  necessary  money  is  another  difficulty. 

The  pupils  themselves  present  three  great  difficulties. 
In  our  country  boys  under  fourteen  generally  go  to 
different  schools  from  boys  over  fourteen,  and  those 
who  wish  to  continue  their  education  after  seventeen  or 
eighteen  leave  school  and  go  to  college,  or  attend  special 
lectures.  But  in  Persia  the  missionary  is  asked  to 
take  them  all  together  in  one  school,  even  middle-aged 
men  wishing  to  become  pupils.  But  it  is  quite  im¬ 
possible  to  make  a  satisfactory  school  of  boys  and  men 
together.  It  is  sometimes  possible,  especially  in  the 
larger  schools,  to  arrange  separately  for  the  men,  but 
generally  an  age  limit  has  to  be  set. 

The  second  difficulty  arises  from  the  number  of  boys 
who  want  to  learn  English  and  who  are  never  likely  to 
have  any  use  for  it.  They  have  an  idea  that  it  is  so 
new  and  uncommon  that  any  one  who  knows  it  is  bound 
to  get  work  at  a  good  salary,  and  so  they  want  to 
waste  their  time  over  it  when  they  ought  to  be  learning 
the  subjects  they  will  really  need  for  their  work.  It 
takes  some  time  and  trouble  to  sort  these  boys  out 
from  those  who  are  really  likely  to  need  English. 
The  third  difficulty  is  not  peculiar  to  Persia,  though  it 
presents  some  peculiarities  there.  It  is  the  problem 
of  managing  the  boys. 

Boys  in  England,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  sometimes  tell 
lies,  but  in  Persia  it  would  be  more  correct  to  say  that 
they  sometimes  tell  the  truth. 


CHRISTIAN  SCHOOLS 


73 


Then  again  the  boys  are  of  different  ranks  ;  some 
of  them  come  with  their  servants,  and  a  certain  amount 
of  tact  has  to  be  used  to  get  them  to  accept  the  ordi¬ 
nary  rules  of  discipline.  But  in  a  school  where  every¬ 
body  comes  to  learn  most  of  these  difficulties  can  be 
overcome. 

/ 

Persian  boys  want  knowing,  like  all  boys,  but  when 
one  tries  to  do  one’s  best  for  them  one  finds  them 
thoroughly  lovable  and  possessed  of  a  large  number 
of  exceedingly  good  points. 

Lastly,  the  Mullds,  or  Muhammadan  clergy,  see 
in  the  schools  the  greatest  danger  to  their  religion,  and 
they  oppose  them  strongly.  They  know  that  such 
close  contact  with  Christians  must  open  the  boys’ 
eyes  to  some  extent  to  the  contrast  between  Muham¬ 
madanism  and  Christianity,  and  they  know  Muham¬ 
madanism  cannot  stand  such  a  comparison. 

Many  Muhammadans,  who  believe  that  Muhamma¬ 
danism  is  a  true  religion  given  to  them  by  God  through 
Muhammad,  still  see  that  Christianity  is  the  better 
religion,  and  Muhammadans  have  told  me  that  God  had 
given  us  a  better  religion  than  He  had  given  them. 

So  the  Mullds  try  to  persuade  or  frighten  the 
fathers  into  not  sending  their  boys  to  the  Mission- 
school,  they  try  to  frighten  the  boys  out  of  going,  and 
they  try  to  get  the  governors  to  close  the  schools.  But 
it  is  God’s  work,  and  He  does  not  allow  them  to  stop 
it  for  long. 

The  boys  themselves  show  the  greatest  interest  in 
whatever  they  are  told  about  the  Bible,  and  naturally 
in  one  way  or  another  Bible  reading  is  always  a 
prominent  feature  of  every  class  of  Mission-school. 


74 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


Sometimes  there  is  a  regular  lesson  on  the  Bible  as 
one  of  the  school  subjects,  but  in  other  placs  there 
are  no  Bible  lessons,  but  only  prayers  and  Bible-reading, 
with  very  simple  explanations.  But  however  this 
may  be,  the  gospel  story  of  Christ  Jesus,  which  is  known 
by  name  to  every  Muhammadan,  but  by  more  than 
name  to  very,  very  few,  is  always  of  absorbing  interest, 
and  is  not  likely  to  be  forgotten. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

WORK 

"  To  the  house  of  ‘Ali  Akbar  the  pea-roaster/'  I  said  to 
my  servant. 

"  There  are  two  ‘ Ali  Akbars  pea-roasters/’  he  replied, 
“  one  is  alive,  and  one  dead;  which  do  you  want  ?  ” 

It  proved  to  be  the  widow  who  had  sent  for  me,  and 
we  were  soon  great  friends. 

“  And  do  you  go  to  school  ?  ”  I  asked  Husain,  a 
merry  little  boy  of  eight. 

“  No,  I  am  an  apprentice-baker/'  he  said  with  an 
evident  sense  of  importance;  he  felt  he  was  a  wage- 
earner — a  halfpenny  a  day,  I  think  was  the  amount,  but 
where  a  labourer  often  only  earns  fivepence  a  day,  even 
a  halfpenny  a  day  counts  for  something  in  the  family. 

Seven  years  old  seems  to  be  a  very  common  age  for 
apprenticing  boys  in  Persia.  A  boy  of  that  age  can 
make  himself  useful  and  gradually  learn  his  trade,  and 
if  his  master  and  his  fellow-apprentices  are  kind  he 
may  be  very  happy,  like  my  little  baker.  He  probably 
fetched  and  carried,  brought  sticks  for  heating  the 


WORK 


75 


oven,  laid  out  the  long  thin  flat  loaves  in  rows  as  they 
were  handed  to  him  from  the  oven,  and  later  carried 
them  in  a  tray  on  his  head,  or  hanging  over  his  shoulder, 
to  some  of  the  customers. 

Probably  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  Himself  started 
work  in  the  carpenter’s  shop  at  Nazareth  as  soon  as 
He  could  be  of  any  use.  He  would  fetch  and  carry 
tools,  sort  out  the  nails,  help  to  clear  away  the 
shavings,  and  later  He  would  learn  to  hammer  nails,  to 
saw  and  plane,  just  as  the  little  Persian  apprentices 
do  to-day,  and  He  would  thoroughly  enjoy  helping 
Joseph  in  the  workshop  and  Mary  in  the  house. 

There  was  a  little  “  apprentice-carpenter  ”  who 
looked  such  a  baby  he  can  hardly  have  been  as  old  as 
seven.  He  used  to  run  back  to  the  shop  for  tools  or 
nails,  and  hold  the  hammer,  and  he  even  succeeded 
in  pulling  some  nails  out  of  a  packing-case.  But  his 
master  was  not  always  kind  to  him,  and  sometimes  beat 
him,  and  he  did  not  seem  as  happy  as  the  baker  boy. 

Servants  will  often  bring  their  little  boys  to  the 
house  to  help  them  in  their  work,  and  gradually  fit 
themselves  for  service.  When  they  begin  to  be  really 
useful  the  master  generally  gives  them  a  small  wage. 
A  servant  who  has  no  boy  of  his  own  will  often  bring 
a  nephew  or  a  cousin. 

In  every  trade  you  find  them,  little  boys  whose 
business  it  is  to  lighten  their  elders’  work  a  little  in 
any  way  they  can,  for  the  Persians  are  not  over  fond  of 
hard  work. 

Y ou  find  them  too  in  the  houses  of  poor  people,  who 
cannot  afford  to  keep  a  regular  servant,  but  pay  a  few 
coppers  or  a  meal  to  a  little  boy  to  come  in  and  make 


76 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


himself  useful,  sweeping  the  floor  and  watering  it  in 
hot  weather,  preparing  the  qalian,  or  hookah,  running 
errands,  chopping  firewood,  and  a  hundred  other 
things.  It  is  a  system  that  works  very  well  when  it  is 
worked  with  kindness  and  consideration,  but  it  is  a 
terrible  system  when  it  is  abused. 

In  the  Persian  carpet  trade  we  see  this.  In  the 
villages  the  whole  family  works  at  one  carpet,  and 
as  the  children  grow  old  enough  they  are  taught  and 
made  to  join  in  the  work.  There  need  be  no  cruelty 
in  this,  and  often  the  little  things  are  only  too  proud 
and  happy  to  do  as  their  elders  do,  and  join  in  the 
family  task.  But  unhappily  even  in  the  family  there 
are  many  cases  of  cruel  overwork  and  ill-treatment. 

But  for  the  horrors  of  child  labour  in  the  carpet  trade 
we  must  turn  to  the  factories  of  Kirman. 

These  factories  are  filled  with  children  from  four 
years  old  upward,  underfed,  overworked,  living  a 
loveless,  joyless,  hopeless  life.  The  factories  are  built 
without  windows  lest  the  children’s  attention  should 
be  distracted,  and  the  bad  air,  want  of  food,  and  the 
constantly  keeping  in  one  position  produce  rickets 
and  deformity  in  nearly  all.  Of  thirty-eight  children 
examined  in  one  factory  thirty-six  were  deformed. 

One  of  the  Governors  of  Kirman  forbade  the  em¬ 
ployment  of  children  under  twelve  in  the  factories, 
but  the  order  did  not  last  beyond  his  governorship. 
The  same  Governor  gave  the  order  still  in  force,  which 
forbids  the  employment  of  children  before  dawn  or 
after  sunset,  thus  reducing  their  working  hours  to  an 
average  of  twelve  hours  a  day.  A  recent  Governor 
added  to  this  an  order  limiting  the  Friday  work  to 


WORK 


77 


about  two  and  a  half  hours,  “  from  sunrise  to  full 
sunshine,”  so  now  the  children  share  in  part  the  general 
Friday  holiday  of  Muhammadanism. 

One  of  our  medical  missionaries  was  called  to  attend 
the  wife  of  the  owner  of  one  of  these  factories,  and 
consented  to  do  so  on  condition  he  made  windows  in 
his  factory  to  allow  the  children  air  and  light.  He 
objected  at  first,  saying  that  it  would  prevent  their 
working,  but  finally  consented,  and  admitted  after¬ 
wards  that  the  children  did  more  work  with  the 
windows  than  they  had  done  without  them. 

The  factory  owners  are  glad  to  get  the  children,  for 
they  say  children  work  better  than  grown-up  people 
at  carpet-making,  and  of  course  they  expect  less  wages. 
But  how  can  the  parents  allow  their  children  to  live 
this  cruel  life  ?  You  will  find  the  answer  in  the 
Persian  saying  that  “  of  every  three  persons  in  Kirman, 
four  smoke  opium.” 

The  man  who  takes  opium  regularly  becomes  a 
wreck  ;  first  his  digestion  is  ruined,  then  his  heart  gets 
weak  and  he  get  bronchitis  and  other  chest  troubles, 
and  he  become  unreliable  physically  and  morally ;  he 
is  untruthful  and  deceitful,  and  when  he  is  once  well 
under  the  power  of  the  habit,  he  goes  almost  mad  if 
he  cannot  get  his  opium  at  the  usual  time,  and  would 
sell  his  soul  for  it,  and  does  sell  his  children.  Over 
and  over  again  comes  the  terrible  story,  the  father  and 
mother  smoke  opium ;  the  little  deformed  child  toils 
through  the  long  days  to  earn  the  money  that  buys  it. 

In  the  villages  the  children  begin  almost  as  soon  as 
they  can  run  about  to  take  out  the  sheep  and  goats,  not 
in  green  fields,  for  there  are  none,  but  among  the 


78  CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 

scattered  plants  on  the  mountain-side  or  under  the 
village  trees. 

Only  the  boys  are  allowed  to  take  the  flocks  out  on 
the  hills  at  any  distance  from  the  village,  and  on 
mountains  where  there  are  thought  to  be  wolves,  even 
the  boys  are  forbidden  to  go  without  a  man. 

But  in  and  around  the  villages  boys  and  girls  alike 
turn  out.  Often  they  carry  a  long  pole,  generally  more 
than  twice  as  long  as  themselves.  This  pole  serves  at 
times  as  a  fence  to  keep  the  flock  from  wandering  into 
crops  as  they  pass  them  on  their  way,  or  as  they  graze 
on  the  stubble  of  the  neighbouring  crops  which  have 
been  already  gathered  in.  The  stubble  itself  is  not 
much,  but  there  are  more  weeds  there  because  the 
ground  has  been  watered.  But  neither  on  the  hills 
nor  in  the  fields  can  they  find  much  pasture  in  the  heat 
of  summer,  so  the  little  shepherds  and  shepherdesses 
take  their  flocks  under  the  trees  and  beat  the  leaves 
down  with  their  poles  for  the  animals  to  eat.  When 
the  lower  leaves  are  finished  they  climb,  boys  and 
girls  alike,  into  the  trees,  often  to  considerable  heights, 
and  beat  the  higher  branches.  The  leaves  that  are 
not  eaten  are  dried  and  kept  for  the  winter  as  we  keep 
hay.  It  is  an  awkward  thing  for  a  child  to  climb 
trees  encumbered  with  a  long  pole,  and  in  the  districts 
where  they  do  this  there  are  often  accidents.  One 
little  boy  of  eight  or  nine  was  brought  to  the  Yezd 
hospital  with  a  bad  compound  fracture  of  his  skull 
through  falling  out  of  a  tree  while  tending  the  sheep. 
He  got  nearly  well,  and  then  his  mother  took  him  home, 
so  I  do  not  know  whether  he  fully  recovered  or  not. 

Among  the  richer  classes  the  children  sometimes 


CHILD  WIVES 


79 


undertake  nominal  work  at  a  very  early  age,  but  not 
actual  work.  One  boy  of  about  sixteen  in  our  school 
held  a  position  in  the  Persian  army  corresponding  to 
that  of  Colonel,  and  there  was  said  to  be  a  Field- 
Marshal  of  twelve  in  the  army. 

Merchants  consider  it  good  training  for  their  sons 
to  do  a  little  business  on  their  own  account,  and  some 
of  our  schoolboys  imported  goods  from  Bombay  or 
elsewhere  while  they  were  still  at  school,  and  disposed 
of  them  at  a  profit. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

CHILD  WIVES 

The  Persian  girls  stay  at  home  longer  than  the  little 
apprentices,  but  not  so  long  as  the  richer  schoolboys. 

The  usual  age  for  a  Muhammadan  girl  to  marry  is 
thirteen  or  fourteen,  but  in  many  places  they  marry 
as  early  as  eight  or  nine. 

This  perhaps  explains  why  the  girl  is  given  no  voice  in 
the  choice  of  a  husband,  and  all  is  left  to  the  parents. 

It  perhaps  partly  explains  too  why  Muhammadans 
are  allowed  to  beat  their  wives,  though  they  will  tell 
you,  as  a  proof  of  their  prophet’s  kindness  to  women, 
that  he  forbade  them  to  do  it  with  a  chain.  A  little  girl 
who  has  not  had  time  to  grow  up  and  learn  to  behave 
herself,  will  often  no  doubt  be  difficult  to  control. 

The  young  wife  of  a  shoemaker  one  day  lost  her 
temper  because  her  husband  said  he  could  not  afford 
to  buy  her  something  she  wanted.  She  proceeded  to 
break  all  the  ornaments  in  the  house  and  to  tear  her 


80 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


best  chddar  to  rags.  Her  husband,  who  was  a  Christian, 
went  to  the  English  missionary  to  ask  whether  it  would 
be  allowable  under  the  circumstances  to  beat  her. 

Another  girl  refused  to  cook  her  husband  any  food 
when  he  came  home  from  his  work,  and  would  not 
even  speak  to  him.  She  admitted  that  he  was  very 
kind  to  her,  and  that  she  liked  him  better  than  her 
own  brothers,  but  still  continued  to  sulk  in  this  way. 
Her  own  relations  said  a  good  beating  was  what  she 
wanted,  but  her  husband  had  scruples  about  wife¬ 
beating,  and  would  not  do  anything.  But  not  many 
Persian  husbands  are  so  forbearing. 

Another  necessary  result  of  these  early  marriages 
is  the  custom  of  living  with  the  husband's  parents. 
A  girl  of  even  fourteen  is  not  fit  to  be  given  sole  charge 
of  a  house.  So  the  bridegroom  takes  his  bride  home 
to  his  father’s  house,  and  puts  her  under  the  charge  of 
her  mother-in-law.  When,  however,  the  mother-in- 
law  becomes  a  widow,  she  has  to  take  a  secondary  place, 
if  her  daughter-in-law  is  at  all  of  an  age  to  manage  her 
own  affairs.  Then  the  old  lady  often  prefers  to  leave 
her  son’s  house,  and  to  go  and  live  with  a  married 
daughter,  and  the  men  are  generally  very  good  in 
taking  in  their  mothers-in-law. 

Poor  little  girl  wives !  They  are  taken  away  from 
home  before  they  are  grown  up,  and  although  they  are 
now  married  women  they  cannot  help  behaving  as 
children.  There  was  one  young  wife  of  a  Government 
official  who  received  her  visitors  with  the  utmost 
dignity  and  propriety,  and  then  could  not  resist  the 
temptation  to  pinch  the  old  black  woman  who  was 
handing  the  tea  and  make  her  jump. 


CHILD  WIVES 


81 


And  they  hardly  know  what  to  do  with  their  babies. 
They  love  to  nurse  them  and  play  with  them,  but  they  get 
very  tired  of  them  and  are  often  glad  to  hand  them  over  to 
the  grandmother.  I  went  to  condole  with  one  girl  on  the 
death  of  her  dear  little  baby,  and  she  said,  “  It  was  just 
as  well  it  died  before  the  winter.  It  would  have  been 
such  cold  work  getting  up  in  the  night  to  look  after  it.” 

Even  when  the  children  grow  older  their  mothers, 
grown-up  children  themselves,  do  not  know  how  to 
manage  them.  What  do  you  think  of  mothers  who 
lose  their  tempers  with  their  children,  and  fly  at  them 
and  bite  them  ?  And  they  are  not  ashamed  of  it,  and 
their  neighbours  do  not  seem  surprised  or  horrified. 
One  woman  bit  her  little  boy’s  hand,  till  it  bled  badly. 
He  was  about  seven,  and  had  cried  to  have  his  best 
coat  on  when  he  went  to  see  the  missionary.  Another 
woman  bit  the  cheek  of  a  poor  little  consumptive  girl 
of  eight  or  nine,  so  that  there  was  a  great  bruise,  and  the 
skin  was  broken.  She  told  a  neighbour,  with  a  laugh,  that 
she  had  got  angry  with  the  child  because  she  was  tire¬ 
some  about  taking  her  medicine,  which  was  very  nasty. 

There  is  no  command  in  the  Quran  that  girls  should 
be  married  so  young,  but  the  mothers  declare  that  it 
was  the  command  of  Muhammad,  and  certainly  he 
himself  set  the  example  by  marrying  a  girl  of  nine.  So 
when  a  mother  thinks  her  girl  is  getting  old  enough 
to  marry  she  begins  to  look  out  for  a  suitable  husband, 
and  talks  things  over  with  the  mother  or  sister  of  any 
man  she  thinks  likely.  The  man’s  mother  is  allowed 
to  see  the  girl,  but  not  the  man  himself,  so  you  see  even 
the  men  cannot  choose  their  own  wives.  Then  the 
money  matters  are  arranged.  It  is  settled  how  much 

F 


82 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


the  girl’s  father  will  give  her,  and  how  much  her 
husband  will  settle  on  her,  and  there  is  often  a  great 
deal  of  haggling  over  this. 

If  a  girl  has  a  cousin  who  is  the  son  of  her  father’s 
brother,  he  is  considered  the  most  appropriate  husband 
for  her,  and  it  is  considered  an  act  of  merit  for  him  to 
marry  her. 

If  a  girl  has  a  large  dowry  she  can  generally  get  a 
good  husband  as  husbands  go  out  there.  If  she  is 
poor  she  has  more  difficulty,  but  a  capable,  industrious 
girl  may  do  fairly  well.  But  a  penniless  girl  with 
nothing  to  recommend  her  fares  badly  indeed.  When 
her  mother  fails  to  get  any  husband  who  is  at  all  de¬ 
sirable  instead  of  letting  her  girl  remain  single,  she 
marries  her  to  a  madman  or  a  drunkard  or  a  deformed 
man,  or  someone  utterly  undesirable. 

The  engagement  is  celebrated  by  a  formal  sweet¬ 
eating  to  which  the  friends  on  both  sides  are  invited. 

The  bride  and  her  family  prepare  her  trousseau,  and 
she  also  has  to  make  a  complete  suit  of  clothes  for  the 
bridegroom.  In  one  town  now  it  is  customary  for  every 
well-to-do  bride  to  have  one  European  dress  in  her  trous¬ 
seau,  and  for  her  father  to  give  her  a  table  and  chairs. 

The  wedding  itself  is  a  great  affair,  lasting  a  week, 
if  the  bride’s  father  can  afford  it,  but  only  a  day  or 
part  of  a  day  in  the  case  of  poor  people.  The  little 
bride  in  her  finest  clothes,  of  which  she  is  very  proud, 
looks  very  disconsolate  and  cries  a  great  deal.  No 
doubt  the  tears  are  sometimes  genuine  enough,  for  the 
child  is  leaving  her  home  and  going  to  people  she  knows 
little  of,  but  even  if  she  feels  inclined  to  laugh  and  smile 
she  must  not  do  anything  so  improper. 


CHILD  WIVES  88 

After  the  wedding  she  must  not  leave  her  husband’s 
house  for  a  year,  but  she  may  receive  visitors. 

As  we  have  seen  the  marriage  and  wedding  are 
arranged  by  the  women,  but  generally  the  bridegroom 
has  more  say  in  the  matter  than  one  young  man  I 
knew.  He  had  been  engaged  for  some  time,  and  on 
going  home  from  work  one  evening  found  his  wedding 
prepared  without  his  having  been  consulted,  and  had 
to  be  married  then  and  there.  He  was  fond  of  children, 
and  quickly  won  the  heart  of  his  little  wife,  who  cried 
when  he  had  to  go  back  to  his  work. 

We  do  sometimes  find  happy  family  parties  in 
Persia,  the  husbands  treating  their  wives  with  con¬ 
sideration,  and  the  wives  being  very  fond  of  their 
husbands.  One  old  lady  told  me,  with  tears  in  her  eyes, 
how  good  her  husband  always  was  to  her,  and  how  he 
always  got  up  and  made  a  cup  of  tea  for  her  in  the 
morning  if  she  was  not  well.  But  this  is  the  exception 
and  not  the  rule.  There  does  not  generally  seem  to  be 
any  great  affection  between  husband  and  wife.  The 
husband  expects  implicit  obedience  from  his  wife,  and 
is  prepared  to  enforce  it.  On  the  other  hand  she  has 
certain  privileges.  She  generally  has  the  best  court¬ 
yard  in  the  house,  to  which  no  men  are  admitted  but 
near  relations,  and  the  smaller  courtyard  is  given  up 
to  her  husband  to  receive  his  guests  in. 

Except  in  the  highest  classes  Persian  women  go  about 
a  good  deal,  but  always  have  to  wear  a  veil  in  the  street 
or  draw  the  chadar  over  their  faces. 

The  man  is  absolute  master  in  his  own  house,  and  unless 
his  wife  has  powerful  relations  he  may  do  what  he  likes 
to  her  and  her  children,  and  no  one  will  take  any  notice. 


84 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


I  knew  one  woman  whose  husband  treated  her  like  a 
slave.  He  forced  her  not  only  to  do  all  the  work  of 
the  house,  but  the  work  of  the  stable  too,  for  he  was 
well  enough  off  to  keep  a  horse.  He  killed  one  child 
in  her  arms,  and  twice  stole  another  away  from  her, 
sending  it  once  to  a  town  a  week’s  journey  off,  and  once 
to  another  part  of  the  town.  Finally  he  divorced  her, 
without  giving  any  reason,  and  left  her  ill  and  destitute. 
And  she  had  at  no  time  any  redress. 

Certainly  Muhammadanism  does  not  tend  to  make 
good  husbands,  nor  perhaps  good  wives  either.  The 
Persians  are  many  of  them  kindly  people,  however,  and 
treat  their  wives  better  than  Muhammad  taught  them 
to  do.  Otherwise  the  lot  of  women  in  Persia  would  be 
harder  than  it  is.  One  great  evil  they  are  spared,  for 
the  widows  are  not  despised  and  ill-treated  as  the 
Hindu  widows  are,  but  are  allowed  to  marry  again,  and 
generally  do  so  if  they  are  of  a  suitable  age. 

Still  the  condition  of  girls  in  Persia  is  not  a  happy 
one,  and  I  think  that  all  of  you  who  have  Christian 
mothers,  and  know  what  the  love  of  such  a  mother  can 
be,  will  have  something  to  pray  about,  when  you  think 
of  mothers  and  their  children  in  Persia. 


CHAPTER  XV 

SICK  CHILDREN 

Measles,  scarlet  fever,  whooping  cough,  mumps, 
chickenpox,  Persian  children  have  them  all.  Typhoid 
fever,  diphtheria,  rheumatic  fever  are  all  common. 
But  almost  the  commonest  illness  of  all  is  smallpox. 


SICK  CHILDREN 


85 


A  woman  brought  a  child  into  the  dispensary  waiting- 
room  one  day  covered  with  a  smallpox  rash.  The 
doctor,  new  to  the  country,  ordered  her  out,  con¬ 
demning  her  reckless  disregard  for  infection.  “  Is 
there  anyone  who  has  not  had  smallpox  ?  ”  she  asked, 
looking  round  at  the  thirty  or  forty  other  people 
in  the  room.  As  she  expected,  all  had  had  it,  and  she 
came  in. 

It  is  considered  a  children’s  illness,  because  people 
hardly  ever  grow  up  without  having  had  it.  In  fact, 
their  parents  take  care  they  shall  not,  for  they  are  so 
afraid  they  will  take  it  badly  at  an  awkward  time  that 
they  choose  a  convenient  time,  and  either  put  the  child 
with  a  person  who  has  smallpox  mildly,  or,  oftener, 
inoculate  him  with  it,  just  as  we  inoculate  our  babies 
with  vaccine. 

My  cook  asked  me  one  day,  with  tears,  to  go  and 
see  his  baby  ;  they  had  given  it  smallpox  to  get  it 
over,  and  it  had  taken  it  badly.  I  am  glad  to  say  it 
recovered.  He  had  not  thought  it  necessary  to  make 
any  difference  in  his  cooking  for  us,  while  he  was 
spending  his  nights  with  a  baby  with  smallpox. 
Another  missionary’s  cook  brought  his  little  boy  with 
smallpox  to  the  kitchen  because  it  was  more  cheerful 
for  him  than  being  at  home ;  he  could  lie  and  watch  his 
father  cooking. 

So  the  Persians  do  not  take  much  trouble  to  prevent 
their  children  from  getting  ill.  How  do  they  care  for 
them  when  they  are  ill  ? 

First  of  all  they  start  doctoring  them  themselves, 
except  in  smallpox,  when  they  say  it  is  dangerous  to  give 
any  medicine.  For  other  illnesses  they  give  plenty  of 


86 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


medicine,  not  in  little  teaspoonfuls,  but  in  nice  big 
bowlfuls,  and  the  nastier  it  is  the  more  good  they  think 
it  will  do.  On  the  whole  Persian  children  are  ex¬ 
ceedingly  good  about  taking  their  medicine,  but 
whether  they  are  or  not  they  have  to  take  it.  One 
way  of  giving  it  to  naughty  children  is  to  pour  it 
through  their  noses  from  a  little  tin  cup  with  a  long 
narrow  spout. 

If  the  child  gets  no  better  the  doctor  is  consulted  ; 
very  often  two  or  three  doctors  are  called  in,  and  some¬ 
times  the  parents  follow  the  doctor’s  advice,  but  very 
often  they  do  not.  It  depends  partly  on  the  beads, 
and  a  good  deal  on  how  much  they  have  paid.  If  they 
pay  much  they  generally  make  the  patient  take  all 
the  medicine  for  fear  their  money  should  be  wasted. 
If  the  doctor  seems  unable  to  cure  the  patient  a  reader 
is  called  in,  sometimes  a  man,  sometimes  a  woman,  who 
reads  the  Quran  over  the  patient  in  the  hope  that  it 
may  effect  a  cure  where  medical  treatment  has  failed. 

In  the  case  of  a  long,  tiresome  illness,  or  when  they 
despair  of  recovery,  it  is  not  uncommon  for  the  patient’s 
friends  to  hasten  the  end  by  giving  a  dose  of  poison. 

One  girl,  who  had  very  little  the  matter  with  her,  but 
was  always  making  a  fuss  over  her  ailments,  gave  her 
family  a  great  deal  of  trouble  with  her  fancies.  They 
found  her  recovery  was  likely  to  be  slow,  and  although 
she  was  going  on  well  they  one  day  told  the  doctor  that 
“  they  had  given  her  sherbet  and  she  had  died.” 

I  myself  was  several  times  asked  to  give  poison  in 
the  form  of  medicine,  and  I  think  they  were  rather 
surprised  when  I  told  them  how  Christians  regard 
such  a  thing. 


SICK  CHILDREN 


87 


When  the  medical  missionary  starts  work  he  may 
be  puzzled  by  the  very  common  request  that  he  will 
give  the  second  medicine  first.  It  appears  that  the 
people  think,  with  how  much  truth  I  cannot  say,  that 
their  doctors  give  first  a  medicine  to  make  the  patient 
worse  and  then  one  to  make  him  better. 

Perhaps  that  was  what  the  devoted  old  grandmother 
was  thinking  of,  who  had  brought  her  poor  little  grand¬ 
daughter  in  from  a  village  many  miles  away,  very,  very 
ill  with  rheumatic  fever.  She  called  in  the  English 
doctor,  and  got  her  medicine  from  the  dispensary,  but 
when  the  doctor  called  next  day,  she  said  she  had  not 
given  the  child  any,  because  she  remembered  she  had 
never  asked  if  it  would  do  her  good  and  so  she  was 
afraid  to  try  it. 

It  must  surely  have  been  in  the  minds  of  the  friends 
of  one  patient  who  came  to  the  missionary,  and  said 
their  friend  was  worse  every  time  she  took  her  medicine, 
and  they  wanted  some  more,  it  was  doing  her  so  much 
good. 

When  you  are  very  ill,  Mother  keeps  you  very  quiet 
and  does  not  let  you  see  visitors,  but  when  a  little 
Persian  is  very  ill  all  the  neighbours  crowd  in  to  see  him, 
and  the  more  ill  he  is  the  more  people  come  in.  And 
they  do  not  tread  on  tiptoe  and  talk  in  a  whisper,  they 
all  talk  quite  loud  out  and  smoke  qalians  and  drink 
tea,  and  make  noise  enough  to  give  anyone  in  good 
health  a  headache,  much  more  a  sick  child. 

One  day  I  was  called  in  to  see  a  child  who  was 
dangerously  ill.  Instead  of  showing  me  into  her  room, 
the  mother,  together  with  a  variety  of  aunts,  sisters, 
and  other  relations,  escorted  me  to  their  receiving- 


88 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


room.  I  asked  for  the  sick  child,  and  was  told  I  should 
see  her  after  tea,  which  meant  at  least  half  an  hour’s 
delay.  As  the  account  they  had  given  of  her  sounded 
very  bad,  I  said  I  could  not  wait,  that  it  was  not  our 
custom  to  think  of  tea-drinking  and  entertainment 
when  our  patients  were  perhaps  dying.  With  great 
difficulty  I  managed  to  persuade  them  to  take  me  to 
the  poor  little  girl,  whom  they  had  left  alone  while  they 
all  came  to  have  tea  and  sweets  with  me.  She  was,  as 
they  had  said,  very  ill,  her  recovery  was  very  doubtful, 
yet  as  soon  as  we  left  the  room,  and  had  sent  for  the 
medicine,  they  were  all  eager  to  entertain  me,  and  I  do 
not  think  anyone  would  have  stayed  with  the  child  if  I 
had  not  insisted,  and  they  were  all  as  gay  and  lively  as  if 
they  had  had  no  one  dangerously  ill  in  the  next  room. 

The  Persians  are  very  hospitable  and  like  to  put  their 
best  before  a  visitor,  and  they  consider  it  very  necessary 
to  provide  something  nice  for  the  doctor.  Some 
Persian  doctors  send  word  beforehand  what  refresh¬ 
ments  they  would  like  got  ready. 

Sometimes  this  deters  the  very  poor  from  calling 
in  even  the  mission  doctor,  who,  they  know,  would 
treat  them  free.  They  cannot  even  provide  tea  and 
sugar.  It  was  a  great  relief  to  more  than  one  poor 
person,  when  it  was  discovered  that  the  mission  ladies 
were  fond  of  boiled  turnips,  for  a  plate  of  turnips  was 
within  the  reach  of  the  poorest,  costing  only  about  a 
halfpenny.  The  news  spread,  and  several  sick  people 
were  able  at  once  to  have  a  doctor. 

But  it  is  in  surgery  that  one  sees  the  Persian  doctor 
at  his  worst. 

Here  comes  little  Husain  with  his  head  plastered 


SICK  CHILDREN 


89 


up  with  mud  ;  on  removing  the  mud  we  find  a  broken 
skull  and  a  large  wound  in  a  foul  condition.  Next 
comes  little  Saklneh  with  both  hands  burnt ;  the 
burns  are  smeared  with  sticky  white  of  egg  covered 
over  with  leaves ;  it  will  take  days  of  proper  dressing 
to  get  the  wounds  clean.  But  she  is  not  so  badly  off 
as  Rubabeh,  whose  burn  has  been  dressed  with  cam¬ 
phorated  oil,  and  is  so  inflamed  that  she  screams  and 
cries  the  whole  time. 

A  more  fortunate  child  was  the  little  girl  who  was 
scalded  nearly  all  over,  but  not  deeply,  and  who  looked 
like  a  little  nigger  with  the  ink  they  had  put  on.  She 
got  well  very  quickly.  It  is  like  Indian  ink,  and  seems 
to  be  the  best  of  the  remedies  the  Persians  use  for  burns. 

With  broken  bones  the  Persian  doctors  are  not  very 
successful  either.  Little  Hasan,  aged  four,  fell  and 
broke  both  arms.  The  Persian  doctor  as  usual  tied 
them  up  with  splints  that  were  too  small  to  be  any  real 
use,  but  he  tried  to  make  up  for  that  by  tying  the 
bandages  very  tight,  and  poor  little  Hasan  had  both 
arms  partly  destroyed.  How  proud  he  was  when, 
after  some  weeks’  at  the  C.M.S.  hospital,  he  was  able 
to  carry  an  English  doll  clasped  to  his  heart  with  the 
two  poor  bandaged  stumps. 

There  was  some  truth  in  what  one  doctor  said,  that 
more  than  half  the  cases  that  came  into  the  hospital  had 
come  there  in  consequence  of  the  Persian  doctors’  treat¬ 
ment.  The  remedy  is  generally  worse  than  the  disease. 

There  are  exceptions,  and  I  have  met  Persian  doctors, 
who  not  only  had  real  knowledge  of  medical  treatment, 
but  had  some  of  the  true  doctor’s  spirit  of  pity  and 
self-sacrifice.  Especially  I  would  mention  the  brave 


90 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


Persian  doctor  who  stayed  at  his  post  in  Shiraz  in  the 
cholera  epidemic  of  1904,  and  fought  that  terrible 
disease  instead  of  3/ielding  to  the  panic  that  had  seized 
his  fellow  countrymen. 

It  is  evident,  however,  that  there  is  a  great  and 
crying  need  for  dispensaries  and  hospitals  in  Persia. 
So  in  the  north  the  American  Presbyterians,  and  in  the 
south  the  Church  Missionary  Society,  have  founded 
them  in  a  number  of  towns. 

As  a  rule  a  dispensary  is  started  first,  to  which  out¬ 
patients  can  come  to  get  medicines  and  have  their  hurts 
attended  to.  Later  a  hospital  is  opened.  Generally 
the  first  hospital  is  a  very  poor  affair,  but  as  the  work 
grows  money  is  collected,  and  nice,  clean,  convenient 
hospitals  are  built  and  furnished.  Armenian  and 
Persian  boys  and  girls  are  trained  as  nurses  and 
assistants,  the  boys  for  the  men’s  hospital,  the  girls 
for  the  women’s  and  children’s. 

Here  Hasan  and  *Ali,  Fatimeh  and  Rubabeh,  and  a 
great  many  other  little  Persian  children  are  made  as 
comfortable  as  their  illness  allows,  and  are  kept  clean 
and  happy  in  comfortable  beds,  and  well  fed  and  cared 
for. 

Morning  and  evening  they  hear  prayers  read,  and 
soon  they  too  venture  to  join  in  the  "  Our  Father.” 
And  every  day  someone  reads  and  explains  in  the  ward 
something  about  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  His  love 
and  His  teaching,  and  they  learn  that  He  knows  and 
loves  each  little  Akbar  or  Saklneh  and  wants  them  for 
His  own,  and  they  learn  to  love  Him  because  He  first 
loved  them.  They  learn  hymns  too,  and  love  to  sing 
them,  the  same  hymns  that  you  know  so  well,  “  Whiter 


A  MISSION  HOSP1TAI 


SICK  CHILDREN 


91 


than  snow/’  “  Simply  trusting,”  “  Here  we  suffer 
grief  and  pain,”  and  many  others. 

The  last  recalls  the  story  of  little  Bagum,  the  child- 
wife,  who  was  deliberately  and  cruelly  burnt  by  her 
husband,  and  was  brought  to  the  mission  hospital. 
There  was  no  hope  of  recovery,  but  all  was  done  that 
was  possible  to  relieve  her  pain  and  brighten  her  last 
days. 

She  had  heard  something  of  the  Gospel  story  from 
a  missionary  who  had  paid  a  visit  to  her  native  village, 
and  she  had  been  so  interested  that  she  had  asked  two 
Persian  children  to  teach  her  more.  When  she  was 
brought  to  the  hospital  even  the  terrible  pain  she  was 
suffering  did  not  make  her  forget  the  wonderful  story, 
and  she  begged  to  be  told  more  and  more.  And  resting 
in  the  love  of  Christ  and  trusting  wholly  in  Him  and 
His  salvation,  she  loved  to  sing  of  the  joy  to  which  He 
was  going  to  take  her  and  kept  begging  for  “  Here  we 
suffer  grief  and  pain,”  and  repeating  over  and  over  the 
refrain,  “  Shadl,  Shadi,”  (joy,  joy),  until  even  the 
Muhammadan  women  would  sit  beside  her  and  sing  the 
hymn  that  comforted  her  so  much. 

In  a  small  village  in  another  part  of  Persia  lived  a 
little  lame  girl.  She  could  not  walk  at  all,  and  her 
leg  was  drawn  up  so  that  she  could  not  straighten  it, 
and  she  suffered  very  much.  She  was  a  good  deal  of 
trouble  to  her  parents,  and  they  got  tired  of  taking  care 
of  her,  and  neglected  her  a  good  deal,  till  at  last  her 
father  heard  of  the  mission  hospital  in  the  neighbour¬ 
ing  town,  seventeen  miles  off,  and  took  her  there  to  see 
if  the  Ferangis  (Europeans)  could  cure  her.  She  was 
taken  in,  washed,  and  dressed  in  clean  clothes  and 


92 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


put  to  bed.  At  first  she  used  to  scream  when  her  leg 
was  touched,  but  it  was  operated  on,  and  gradually,  very 
gradually,  the  pain  grew  less,  and  the  leg  grew  straighten 
But  still,  as  the  months  went  on,  the  recovery  was  very 
slow,  and  when  the  weather  grew  so  hot  that  the 
hospital  had  to  be  closed  and  her  father  took  her 
home,  though  free  from  pain  while  she  lay  still  in 
bed,  the  pain  was  so  great  when  she  tried  to  stand  that' 
she  could  not  walk  a  step.  But  as  she  lay  alone  on  her 
bed  at  home  she  thought  over  all  she  had  heard  at  the 
hospital,  and  one  day  a  new  thought  struck  her. 
Surely  the  Khanums  had  told  her  that  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ,  Who  used  to  cure  people  so  wonderfully,  was 
alive  still  and  could  hear  when  anyone  spoke  to  Him. 
Why  had  she  never  asked  Him  to  make  her  leg  well  ? 
And  then  and  there,  in  her  ignorance  and  simple  faith, 
she  asked  Him,  Who  in  the  old  Gospel  days  had  made 
the  lame  to  walk,  to  make  her  walk,  and,  confident  in 
His  love  and  power,  she  “  arose  and  walked.” 

When  the  hospital  was  reopened  she  came  back 
again  still  lame,  still  in  pain,  but  able  to  walk  about 
with  a  stick.  And  she  loved  more  than  ever  to  hear  of 
Him  who  had  not  only  done  so  much  for  the  sick 
Jews  of  old  times,  but  had  done  so  much  too  for 
her. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

CONCLUSION 

A  Persian  was  one  day  talking  to  an  English  mission¬ 
ary  and  asked  why  our  King  did  not  annex  Persia. 


CONCLUSION 


93 


“  It  is  not  right,”  said  the  missionary,  “  to  take 
what  belongs  to  someone  else,  and  Persia  belongs  to 
your  Shah.” 

“  Still  your  King  is  surely  bound  to  do  as  the  Bible 
tells  him,  and  the  Bible  tells  him  to  annex  it.” 

“  Where  does  the  Bible  say  that  ?  ” 

“  Does  it  not  say  that  if  you  see  your  neighbour’s 
ox  or  ass  fallen  into  a  pit  you  are  to  pull  it  out  ?  And 
Persia  is  an  ass  fallen  into  a  pit,  and  your  King  should 
pull  her  out.” 

Yes,  Persia  has  indeed  fallen  into  a  pit,  and  we  must 
pull  her  out,  but  the  pit  is  not  simply  one  of  political 
difficulty,  it  is  the  pit  of  Muhammadanism,  Persia’s 
most  real  difficulty,  and  we  must  annex  Persia  for  the 
King  of  Kings.  As  long  as  the  Persians  are  Muham¬ 
madans  lying  and  dishonesty  will  be  the  rule,  cruelty 
and  injustice  will  go  hand  in  hand,  the  poor  will  be 
oppressed,  the  girls  and  women  will  be  treated  as 
inferior  creatures,  the  children  will  be  liable  to  over¬ 
work  and  cruelty,  and  religious  persecution  will  con¬ 
tinue.  And  the  Persians  are  finding  out  that  they 
are  in  the  pit  and  they  are  struggling  to  get  out,  they 
are  crying  to  us  for  help.  Are  we  going  to  help  them  ? 

Thousands  of  Muhammadans  in  Persia  are  dis¬ 
satisfied  with  their  religion,  and  are  looking  for  some¬ 
thing  better.  Many  are  trying  a  dissenting  form  of 
Muhammadanism,  called  Bablism,  but  many  are  look¬ 
ing  to  Christianity  for  help. 

At  first  they  distrusted  the  Christians,  and  Christian 
work  was  constantly  hindered  or  stopped.  Now  they 
have  learnt  to  know  and  trust  the  Christians,  and  the 
work  is  not  greatly  interfered  with.  Indeed  every- 


94 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


where  the  Persians  are  asking  for  teachers  and  doctors, 
for  schools  and  hospitals,  and  for  Christian  teaching. 

If  we  do  not  help  them  in  their  search  after  the  Way, 
the  Truth,  and  the  Light,  Muhammad’s  mistake,  which 
has  caused  so  much  misery,  may  be  repeated,  and 
Christianity  rejected  in  favour  of  some  new  religion 
made  to  suit  the  needs  of  the  moment,  but  not  the 
needs  of  eternity.  We  must  all  put  our  shoulder  to 
the  wheel  to  prevent  that. 

The  Persians  are  well  worth  an  effort.  Numbers 
of  Babis  went  to  their  death  in  1903  rather  than  deny 
their  prophet,  and  even  children  have  stood  persecu¬ 
tion  for  Christ.  “  I  have  a  foolish  husband,”  said  one 
little  girl.  “  He  says  he  will  beat  Jesus  Christ  out  of 
me,  but  he  can  only  beat  my  body,  and  J  esus  Christ  is 
in  my  heart,  so  he  cannot  beat  Him  out.” 

And  the  Persians  are  naturally  a  religious  people, 
and  if  their  religious  energy  could  be  turned  from  dead 
works,  formal  prayers,  fastings,  pilgrimages,  divining, 
— turned  to  the  service  of  the  true  and  living  God,  what 
a  splendid  people  they  might  be  again,  what  a  force 
for  God  in  Asia,  and  in  the  world.  For  the  wave  of 
true  religious  life  would  act  again  on  us  and  help  us 
on.  God  grant  we  may  yet  see  the  Persian,  stunted 
as  he  is  by  Muhammadanism,  grow  up  to  a  perfect 
man  to  the  measure  of  the  stature  of  the  fulness  of 
Christ.  And  what  is  our  part  in  this  great  work  ?  It 
is  threefold. 

1.  Prayer.  Persia  wants  our  prayers.  God  wants 
our  prayers  for  Persia.  We  none  of  us  know  all  the 
power  and  possibilities  of  prayer,  and  most  of  us  are 
surprised  when  we  get  direct  and  obvious  answers  to 


CONCLUSION 


95 


our  prayers.  It  takes  us  a  long  time  to  find  out  that 
God  answers  all  our  prayers,  but  He  does.  And  there 
are  many  in  Persia  who  need  our  prayers  :  the  mission¬ 
aries  ;  the  converts,  often  standing  alone  in  a  Muham¬ 
madan  house  or  even  in  a  village  or  in  a  quarter  of  the 
town,  with  no  Christian  friend  to  encourage  them  ;  the 
inquirers,  perplexed  as  to  the  truth,  or  struggling 
with  their  fears  of  confessing  the  Saviour  in  Whom  they 
have  learnt  to  believe ;  the  untouched  Muhammadans, 
oppressing  or  oppressed  ;  the  schools,  the  hospitals 
and  dispensaries,  and  the  services  held  week  by  week 
in  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ. 

2.  Giving.  We  may  help  to  send  out  missionaries 
and  to  keep  up  the  schools  and  hospitals,  either  by 
giving  some  of  our  money,  or  our  time  and  work. 
Have  you  only  five  loaves  and  two  small  fishes  ?  Our 
Lord  can  use  them  to  feed  five  thousand  men  besides 
women  and  children. 

3.  Personal  service.  We  cannot  all  be  missionaries 
in  the  foreign  field.  No,  but  those  who  cannot  give 
themselves  for  foreign  service  can  do  “  garrison  duty  ” 
at  home.  People  often  try  to  dissuade  missionaries 
from  going  abroad,  telling  them  they  are  wanted  at 
home.  But  they  ought  not  to  be  wanted  at  home; 
every  Christian  who  cannot  go  abroad  ought  to  be 
doing  his  share  of  the  work  at  home,  so  that  those 
who  can  go  abroad  may  be  spared. 

And  you  who  read  this  book,  if  you  want  to  help 
forward  God’s  kingdom  in  heathen  and  Muhammadan 
lands,  set  to  work  now  at  once  to  fit  yourselves  to  work 
as  Christian  teachers,  that  you  may  be  ready  to  take 
your  place  in  the  ranks  here  or  there  as  the  great 


96 


CHILDREN  OF  PERSIA 


Captain  places  you.  Get  to  know  your  Bibles  well, 
studying  them  if  possible  with  commentaries  or  aids. 
Do  not  let  shyness  stand  in  the  way  of  your  under¬ 
taking  direct  Christian  work  if  you  are  old  enough. 
Do  your  lessons  or  your  work  thoroughly  and  well,  and 
so  make  yourselves  more  fit  to  be  used  when  the  time 
comes.  Get  into  good  habits  of  healthy  living  and 
simple  food.  Put  away  all  unkind  words  and  thoughts 
and  learn  to  live  in  charity  with  all  men.  Be  regular 
in  your  prayers  morning  and  evening,  and  if  possible 
get  a  regular  time  for  midday  prayer,  even  if  it  is 
only  two  minutes,  but  speak  to  God  too  all  through 
the  day — get  into  the  habit  of  turning  to  Him  at  all 
times.  For  whether  we  work  here  at  home  or  far 
away  in  foreign  lands  we  can  only  do  God’s  work  by 
keeping  in  close  touch  with  Him. 


Date  Due 

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